The nose wheel has been ordered, but it wasn't a straightforward process.
As I noted in the previous post, I sent an email to the shop with the correct part numbers for the nose wheel and main wheel for my plane. Yesterday I received a response from the office manager, Alex, stating that he still hadn't received anything useful from Cessna and asking if I wanted him to get a nose wheel or main wheel. I called him up and said to get whichever was most reasonably priced and could be there soonest.
I got a call earlier today from him and he said it might be better if I went ahead and ordered a wheel myself and had it sent to the shop. This is mainly due to the cost of the wheel he'd found. He'd only checked on the availability of the nose wheel part number. Without going into too much detail of the conversation, I asked him to check for available of the main gear part number as well, and that I'd think about just ordering one myself. I'd let him know if I ended up doing so.
I spent some time looking at the wheels at Texas Air Salvage and, frankly, I wasn't reassured by the pictures, nor by the fact that the condition of each one is "as removed" which means there's no guarantee that it will be free of any issues that would render it unusable. Now TAS is a reputable outfit. They will gladly take it back and give a refund if there's a problem but then you have to deal with shipping it back and, most importantly to me, take more time.
So I started looking around for other parts sellers that might have a better wheel available at a reasonable price and, lo and behold, I found one. One of my search results was BAS Part Sales in Greely Colorado. As it turns out, they had what appears to be exactly what I was looking for.
- It's a nose wheel assembly, so no worries about repurposing a main wheel. Not that there's any practical difference but this is the actual proper part and has the part number stamped on it.
- They offer a 90-day warranty and guarantee that it will work and pass inspection. This is the big one for me.
- It was a bit more expensive than the wheels at TAS, but not much more.
- They offer free shipping.
In addition, though it may not be fully rational, I was impressed by their website. It is a fully modern site on a modern ecommerce system. Most of the other websites I've seen, including the TAS site, are clearly older and haven't been updated in some time. They work, there's nothing inherently wrong with them, but web design and technologies have come a long way over the last decade or so. You see, I work on websites and web services for a living so I notice these things. When I see a well laid-out, modern website, it makes me feel better about the company. I also spoke with a friend afterward and he said he's quite familiar with BAS and spoke well of it.
So I decided to pull the trigger on it. When I got the checkout stage where I selected the shipping method, they offered UPS ground for free, and UPS two-day air for an additional charge. I was going to go with two-day air but then I decided to call them up first to see if they could tell me just how long ground shipping would take. Depending on the difference, it might not make a difference to when I'd be able to fly the plane again.
I called up and spoke with a delightful woman whose name I sadly can't remember. She confirmed that ground shipping to the shop would only take a single day longer than two-day air. Since we were on the phone, we went ahead and completed the deal. She even knocked $25 off the price for me after I told her that this was the final thing we were waiting on before my plane was airworthy again.
Not long after the call was finished, I got an update that the tracking number had been assigned. It is scheduled to arrive Wednesday of next week. I'll be at work events the last half of the week so I won't be able to fly those days anyway. If the part arrives on Wednesday or Thursday, and if the weather cooperates, I hope to be in the air again that weekend. The forecast isn't promising, but I don't need much as all I'll be doing that first flight is circling around the airport at relatively low altitude. Fingers crossed it all comes together.
Finally, getting to the title of this post, I've realized that, when you own an older aircraft - and it's probably true for older cars, boats, and other vehicles as well - there are times when you are going to do something yourself rather than the shop doing it. In this case, I had to research the correct part number, and it was better for my wallet to order the part directly. The shop could order the part from wherever I want them to but they would have to mark the cost up a bit because they'd be reselling it to me. What I did, as I understand it, is not unusual and this probably won't be the last time I order a part and then give it to the shop to install. If this was a brand-new 172, it wouldn't be an issue. Parts would be readily available direct from Cessna (though in many cases a good used part would still be an option). But it's almost 50 years old and as time goes by, and companies change ownership or even go out of business, the correct information can become muddled or just go missing. This is one of the reasons type clubs can be so beneficial as they become a source of record for this knowledge.
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