October 2005- Penn Yan Aero in Penn Yan, N.Y. has been in the aviation engine overhaul business for a long time now—60 years—and they’ve maintained an excellent reputation for good work from nearly that first day.
Begun as an aviation repair shop in 1945 by Harold “Eagle” Middlebrook (who passed away three years ago at the age of 86), Penn Yan Aero has been a family-run business all of these years.
While Penn Yan Aero currently has plans to do some extensive expansion to their physical facility in the near future, they have no intention of moving from the Penn Yan Airport (KPEO) in upstate New York. It’s the only location at which the company has been since that first day of operations in 1945.
The third generation of family members has taken over the reins at Penn Yan Aero, with Bill Middlebrook—the grandson of the company’s founder—now in the role as president of the engine rebuilding company.
Bill’s father Daryl, who had initially stepped into his own father’s aviation business in the early 1960’s, went into semi-retirement in 1995 and has since completely retired from the company. Bill Middlebrook now directs the company. He is doing so in basically the same manner that his father and grandfather had for so many years before him—quality engine sales and rebuilding services for the General Aviation piston fleet.
As the company brochure states, “no matter what your needs or requirements, if it has to do with Lycoming or Continental powerplants, it’s available from Penn Yan Aero.”
Penn Yan Aero has a total staff of approximately 40 employees who turn out about 400 engines per year. Most of the employees have been with the company for anywhere from 10 to 25 years, and they have very little staff turnover.
Since Penn Yan Aero is also a Lycoming, Continental and Superior distributor, they also sell factory new engines. But the biggest bulk of its trade comes from the custom engine rebuilding that they do for their clients. About 50 percent of the engines that go out the door are headed for repeat customers—an impressive statistic.
In addition, Penn Yan Aero’s continual high ranking in every engine overhaul shop customer survey shows that most of their customers seem to agree: dependability, good quality and good value remain hallmarks of the Penn Yan Aero business plan, and a goodly amount of the new customers who sign on to have an engine rebuilt have done so by hearing about Penn Yan Aero via word of mouth from other owners and operators.
All of the Penn Yan Aero remanufactured engines are warranted 100 percent for parts and labor for two years or 500 hours of operation, whichever occurs first (warranties are prorated to TBO). Accessories are warranted for one year.
When the company takes in an engine to overhaul, their contract with the customer is very specific in what the customer will be getting, and at what price. The cost of an engine overhaul is a fixed number, contingent only on a repairable engine case and crankshaft.
Depending on the engine, Penn Yan offers customers any number of options. Choices such as Slick or Bendix magnetos, porting and polishing, particular starters and even custom paint jobs are the sorts of things from which the engine owner can pick.
As the company folks mentioned, the biggest source of problems for them (and, by extension, for every engine rebuild customer) is parts availability. The issuance of a new AD from the FAA can cause additional problems, but there are invariably some necessary parts in short supply on many of the engines on which they work.
The company’s parts department is constantly on the phone, fax and internet in a continual search for this or that. Along those lines, Penn Yan Aero has certain engine types that they won’t rebuild—and that’s because of parts supply.
Unless the parts pipeline for a particular powerplant is pretty steady, the company says they simply can’t support it aftermarket, so they won’t do the rebuild. What they do in many of those cases is to recommend that the owner take the engine to a particular shop that Penn Yan knows will specialize in that type of engine and which has stockpiled or developed a better supply of the applicable parts.
The normal rebuild time for most General Aviation engines is three to four weeks. From a hands-on point of view, it actually takes them 10 days from start to finish on a four-cylinder powerplant and slightly longer for a six.
All engines go through the same process, which begins with a detailed inventory on their arrival that includes the logging in of parts and serial numbers. After that, the arriving engine is torn down and cleaned so that problem areas can be spotted during visual inspection.
All steel parts are magnafluxed to check for cracks, while aluminum parts get a dye penetrant check for the same purpose. Mandatory parts are replaced with new, while other parts are reconditioned as necessary.
The engine is then reassembled, painted, and test run for at least one and a half hours to check for proper compression, fuel flow, power and temperatures. Passing all of that, there is a final check before the rebuilt engine is shipped back to the customer.
While removals and installations were once offered at the Penn Yan facility, they stopped doing so a dozen-plus years ago because of problems that ranged from the New York State sales tax (which made competitive pricing difficult) on through the availability of shop space. What they do offer is free roundtrip shipping of the engine, with Penn Yan Aero getting an appropriate trucking company to do the pickup and delivery, and in supplying the customer with an appropriate crate for packing their exchange engine for shipment.
Another thing the company does is to maintain an inventory of built-up engines of the most common types found in Pipes, thus reducing turnaround time for those folks who want to do a quick engine exchange. The company website (pennyanaero.com) has a list under ‘Engines Now’ that shows the available short-notice exchange engines that they currently have in inventory.
Another area in which the company had become involved over the years is its own STCs for particular models of Pipers. These engine swaps from what the airplane had originally been designed to use were created to improve performance and reliability.
All of the Penn Yan Aero STCs are, of course, fully FAA-approved. As Bill Middlebrook explained to Piper Flyer, “Business is steady. The market doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger, but it also doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller.
“After September 11, we initially lost a slew of business from the smaller operators, but then we gained in other areas. Things have steadied out since, and we are now beginning to see lots of overhauls for newer aircraft these days as their engine times are approaching TBO.
“We are quite bullish on the future of General Aviation, and, naturally, on our corner of the market. We’ll continue to remain committed to our core business. That’s what we’ve been doing for the past 60 years.”
Editor-at-large Thomas Block has flown nearly 30,000 hours since his first hour of dual in 1959. In addition to his 36-year career as a US Airways pilot, he has been an aviation magazine writer since 1969, and a best-selling novelist. He owns an L-19 Bird Dog, which he contends is a straight cross between a Piper Super Cub and a high-wing Cessna taildragger. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
