Triad used to have one of the best reputations in the industry regarding their engine work. As such, I've commissioned them to do a portion of the engine work that comes through my shop for the last several years. It seems as though now there has been a change in the winds.
About a year ago I sent them 5 cylinders for repair: 1 was AOG, which they promptly repaired and returned to me. The other 4 were to be spares, kept in my inventory. After 6 or so months of waiting with no communication from Triad, I inquired as to the status of my cylinders. I was told by Othman Rashed that all 4 were unrepairable for various reasons. Based upon the nature of the communication that I had with Othman, I opted to simply have them send my cylinders back to me. It seemed as though he was uninterested in working with me.
It is worth noting that of these 4 cylinders, only 2 were the same. These were different cylinders, off of and for different engines. I thought it odd that all 4 of them would be so bad as to be unrepairable, but I assumed that Triad was busy and didn't want to mess with them anymore. My hope was to have the cylinders returned to me, and then send them to another shop to have the work done. At the very least, I wanted to get a second opinion. Triad Aviation took that option away from me.
One of my cylinders was quite literally hanging out of its box when it showed up to my shop. There was minimal insulation put in the already feeble box, and by the time I received it, it had fallen half way out. Quite obviously, this cylinder is now completely worthless. If it had been repairable before Triad shipped it, it certainly wouldn't be now that it had been bounced around in a shipping vessel for several hundred miles with essentially no protection. I then opened what was left of that same box to discover that they had packaged 2 cylinders in the box, with no insulation to protect them from each other, so now I have two cylinders that are scrap. Closer inspection of the cylinders verified my fear: there was damage from shipping to the cylinder flanges which rendered them worthless even as cores.
Box #2 was no better. Triad packaged, once again, two cylinders into a single box with no protection to prevent the two from beating each other up. However, they decided to up the ante and also toss the pistons for those cylinders in the box, not wrapped, not protected, not insulated at all. I suppose I should be grateful, as they didn't even return the pistons and pins for my other two cylinders. However, given that they didn't even attempt to protect these two pistons, or the cylinders, they're all worthless due to the damage incurred from being shipped unprotected.
Back to being "unrepairable": the two cylinders which were returned without pistons have already been sand-blasted and honed. The hone job on the one cylinder looks as if I had handed a 4 year old a drill with a stone and told him to stick it inside of a cylinder and pull the trigger. I'm not sure why you would start work on an "unrepairable" cylinder; I could, however, see a shady craftsman destroying a piece of work and then passing it off as being "unrepairable" when it came in. The valve parts were all tossed into a single ziplock bag and thrown into one of the two boxes. Ergo, my rocker arms, shafts, springs, etc are all junk from tumbling around with each other during shipping.
I decided to contact Triad regarding this experience, and I think I was very generous to only ask for a refund for the ~$400 invoice that they billed me. After all, I sent them 4 cylinders that at the least held value as cores, and they sent me 4 beaten up aluminum boat anchors. I think it would have been fair to request that they replace my 4 cylinder assemblies including valve train, pistons, rings, and pins, but I got the impression that they don't care much about customer service anymore so I asked only for a refund for the invoice. I've had no reply. I fear for the safety of anyone flying behind Triad's recent work. read more
