| I understand your comment and agree. In my case, I inspected the visible systems and eventually convinced myself that the large blue stains on the wing bottoms (exiting those Andair check valves so much has been written about recently) were the cause. I convinced myself that on my steep decelerating approaches that fuel must be on the wing bottom and dumping the gear opens that gap into the cockpit and that's why I smelled fuel on approach. It did get worse this past year and when I opened the canopy (you got it correct RonG) I smelled avgas in the cockpit even if it was a day later in the hangar. I knew that made no sense.
Nothing was visible so I removed the cover plates in the Legacy center tunnel just below my knees that cover the Andair fuel selector and spotted the leaking banjos. The AN fittings for the flare connections were all tight--just the banjos were 100% leaking.
Everyone else can learn that if you smell fuel in the cockpit, it should be investigated even at the expense of interior removal and downtime. Thanks Ron.
Paul Calgary On 2011-07-13, at 2:54 PM, Ron Galbraith wrote: You should NEVER smell fuel in the cockpit at any time. If you do, this should be an immediate red flag and indicates a fuel leak. Every time I open the door on an airplane, I smell for fuel. I cannot count the number of times I've mentioned a fuel smell to the owner when I was to give flight instruction and the answer was always. "yes, it smells like that if the plane has been shut up for a while-that's normal". This is not normal and even though it may be a small leak, it is a leak and that is dangerous on several levels. Just because that's the way it's always been doesn't mean its ok.
RonG
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