Shoutout to the guy who showed me a better way to pull a prop governor last Tuesday

I was working a King Air 200 up in Bangor, Maine last week and that governor was just stuck on there. I had been wrestling with it for like 45 minutes, trying the normal tricks with a puller and some heat. Then this older mechanic from the hangar next door walks over and just watches for a minute. He says, 'you're fighting the corrosion, not the bolt.' Then he grabs a 2x4 and a dead blow hammer, taps the flange at a specific angle, and it pops right off. I felt kind of dumb but also super grateful. He told me he learned that trick from a guy who worked on DC-3s back in the 70s. I've never seen anyone do that before, and it saved me a bunch of time. Has anyone else run into those weird little tricks that just aren't in the manual?

2 comments

2 Comments

noahcampbell20d ago

That 2x4 trick is gold... I had the same thing happen on a Beaver up in Alaska a few years back. A guy who used to work on radial engines came over and showed me how to put a little twist on the puller while tapping the flange with a brass hammer. Said it was all about breaking the surface tension of the corrosion without shocking the aluminum. Works every time now on stubborn PT6 stuff too. It's crazy how much of this trade is just passed down from guys who learned it before manuals got so detailed.

kim.sandra20d ago

I think you meant "prop governor" not "prop governor puller" but anyway. That 2x4 trick works on PT6s too but you gotta aim at the 10 o'clock position on the flange. I picked up a similar thing from an old timer who used a wooden broom handle on a Cessna 441 oil filter housing that was cross-threaded from some other hack. He just tapped it at a 45 degree angle and it loosened right up. Not in any manual I've ever seen