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My son, how has been using my 152 for lessons, has managed to break the spring on the latch that holds the oil access door closed. Any ideas on where to get a new one? I'll probably end up going to wentworth, but I just hate the prices they charge.

I'm assuming that it is easier and probably not much more expensive to change the whole door.

Yes, if I were you I'd get one from the son who broke it...let him figure out the details. Let this object lesson be a gift from you to him. He'll appreciate it later on.

Richard, unless your son could tear up an anvil with a rubber hammer, there's little he could have done to break the spring.

They're made of metal that, even though it's designed to flex, will ultimately fail. That is not your son's fault.

The spring was broken on my 152 and I just lived with it. I even bought a new spring, but never felt crazy enough to drill out the hinge and install the new spring.

They're not very expensive, either. The labor to replace it and then to touch up the paint on the rivets really makes it hard to justify when the only manifested problem is that it won't hold itself up. But, if you want to fix it, it ought to be less than 200 dollars for a turn-key repair.

There is a spring that holds that up ?

I guess I should look in my parts book.

I see you have met my son. If hell had a handle on it, that boy would break it. Actually, its the spring inside the latch that broke. Without it, duct tape appears to be the only way to keep the door shut. I will acknowledge that it probably just wore out, but it was on his watch, and I have to make him feel bad about something.

To make matters worse, the plane and my son are in Louisiana where he is staying with my parents due to difficulty in finding an instructor in Atlanta. So in the end, it will probably be my dad who fixes it and me that pays the bill.

I got ya. It's the finger latch spring, not the main hinge spring. That one is way easier to fix. That'll only be 100 dollars.

"If hell had a handle"...I got a good laugh on that one. Good luck with it, Richard.