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The time a bird strike taught me to check cowl flaps before every flight
I was at KAPA last summer helping a buddy with his Cessna 182. We had just pulled it out of the hangar for a preflight and I noticed the right cowl flap was stuck half open from a big mess of feathers and mud. Turns out a magpie had nested in there overnight and jammed the linkage. If we had taken off like that, the engine would have run hot on one side and we might have had a real problem in the pattern. Now I always pop the cowl open and check those flaps before I even touch the oil dipstick. The mechanic at the FBO said he sees this maybe twice a year, but it only takes once to cause serious damage. Has anyone else found random stuff like that in their cowl flaps before a flight?
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mark_carr71mo ago
Back when I flew a 172, I found a fairly large wad of packing foam stuffed into the left cowl flap opening. A previous renter must have used it to keep the engine warm during a cold snap and forgot to pull it out. That could have caused a hell of an overheat once the temps rose at cruise power.
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ryan_shah381mo ago
Has a magpie really jammed up your buddy's cowl flap like that? I found a wad of dried grass and a half-eaten granola bar wrapper in mine once, guess a mouse had a picnic in there before takeoff. Now I always give those flaps a good tug and peek inside, because you never know what critter turned your engine bay into a storage unit.
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jade5171mo ago
That thing about the packing foam for keeping the engine warm is actually not how people do it. You really don't want to stuff anything into the cowl flaps to keep heat in because it can mess up airflow or catch fire if it touches something hot. People usually use a engine preheater or a electric blanket designed for the cowl, not random packing foam. But I get what you mean about finding random stuff in there. I once pulled out a half-eaten bird's nest that had some shiny foil candy wrappers woven into it, the previous owner must have left a snack in the hangar. That magpie story is wild though, I've heard of mice and birds getting in through the gap but a full nest in one night is something else.
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