hunterntexas said:
Those crazy Japanese...
The idea of washing the airplane. Gonna wax it too? Japanese are fastidious about appearance, even up to and beyond efficacy.
One example - we had a batch of Japanese F-16 drag chute D Rings (the frangible part that keeps you from ripping off the end of the airplane) that were failing prematurely. Japanese said our design was bad.
Turns out when that batch of D Rings had been delivered to the chute installer, the Japanese air force quality rep had raised hell because there were runs in the paint. Mind you - the paint met all spec requirements, it just wasn't pretty because of a few runs.
He insisted the parts be stripped and repainted. But ALL the "bad" paint - every damn molecule - had to be stripped to assure it was perfect. So a heated acid bath was used to strip the parts - which also removed the temper from the 7050 aluminum and thus weakened the parts.
So - once they looked perfect - they were about 30% weaker and thus broke prematurely. The Japanese finally agreed out design was fine, but never admitted their own people were the ones who ****ed up the parts.
That - and them running in the office to prove how hard they're working - are just some of what makes them a PITA to work with.