Larry Neal, NHC Revisited

[barnstorm2]

A long time ago, before Norms forum went away I posted the customer service problems I had with Larry Neal when he rebuilt my NHC Planetary Redrive.

Several people chewed my a$$ for criticizing Larry since he was such a nice guy and long time friend to many.

Good guy, good engineer or not that does not mandate that someone is a good business man or provides adequate customer service. I experienced what I experienced and I stood by it and I still do.

I have recently had another business interaction with Larry Neal of which I will now cover the basic details.

1. I found metal shavings in my oil. Inspection discovered the gears on my redrive were eating each other up.

2. I called Larry and he asked me to send him the redrive. I did

3. Larry discovered that one of the gears he had out-sourced was not hardened properly leading to the failure of my redrive. Larry informed me that he would rebuild the drive at no cost to me.

4. Larry promptly rebuilt the redrive and it arrived Thursday. I installed it this Saturday and flew the pattern for the first time since returning from Mentone.

During this time I noted the following things:

Larrys communication was excellent. He was available by phone and when not would promptly call me long distance and leave me voice mail answers. He showed no noticeable signs of annoyance with my numerous nuebe questions.

Larry forgot to return a specialized bolt and washer which he then corrected by giving the specs to my machine shop to make one in time for me to fly this weekend and shipped the originals back overnight for good measure at no cost to me.

I have heard, but have not verified that he has contacted other redrive owners to tell them of the possible problem and is replacing their gears as well.

He has also devised a method of checking the hardness of the gears as to avoid this problem with the replacements and in the future.

All shipping times and dates were met as promised.

I have not forgotten the issues from the first rebuild but from my experience with this one I can now say it is likely that my first experience could have been a fluke and just a bad time for Larry.

I am now testing the rebuilt redive and will post my progress as I can report.

So far Larry gets an A++ for customer service and support for this rebuild.

This comes as a great relief to me as there are little other options for EJ-22 redrives and I am very fond of the new technology Larry has been developing for the butterfly and Monarch gyroplanes.

[automan1223]

Larry got me a new gear from my redrive in under the time he thought. Like many other areas of doing business he is at the mercy of people who are supposed to know and DO their job better than he. HOwever it does not always work that way.

He made no bones about hiding the fact that the gear was not properly treated. He even sent me a new instruction sheet. One thing I would add. As a long time automotive technician. The sun gear should be installed as follows.

I would not use the main bolt to run the gear down. You will bend the thick washer and the gear may not seat all the way.

1. Look at the gear the I.D has a radius to match the input shaft.

2. Use a soft aluminum driver, the backside of a bearing race installer tool, carefully drive the gear down over the keyways. Make sure they are lined up.

3. Make sure the gear sits flush on the back of the step of the input shaft.

4. Tighten bolt to spec.

The main lesson is and that I have learned over and over again, is. NEVER ASSUME ANYTHING