LAX97LA076 · Trickle TR-4
Trickle TR-4 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Q96 · Sacramento, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA076
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Trickle TR-4
- Aircraft type
- Trickle TR-4
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N91RT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q96 · Sacramento, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, connecting rod bolt › Failure
- Engine assembly, connecting rod bolt › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was in cruise at 3,500 feet when a slight engine vibration became apparent to the pilot. The engine oil pressure and temperature were normal; however, as a precaution he turned toward a nearby airport. One minute later, a severe vibration began shaking the aircraft. The pilot could not make the airport and landed in a marshy field. The engine ran the entire time from vibration onset until just before ground contact. The engine was factory new 2.5 years and 358 hours prior to the accident. During recovery of the aircraft, no oil film was observed on the aircraft or in the engine compartment. Significant quantities of clean oil were found in the oil filter canister, and the undamaged oil pump. No metal contamination or scoring was observed to the oil pump housing or impeller rotors. Complete engine disassembly revealed that the number 3 connecting rod was separated from the crankshaft journal, with severe peening noted to both the rod end and crankshaft journal. No significant heat distress or scoring signatures were noted on any bearing or journal. The battered number 3 rod end cap and the two associated bolts were found in the oil sump. One bolt was found fractured just below the head. The second bolt was bent about 20 degrees, with severe battering noted to the bolt threads and a portion of the nut. The direction of bend in the distorted bolt was observed to be 180 degrees from the center of the rod cap. Metallurgical examination of the fractured bolt revealed a fatigue crack with multiple plane origins in the radius between the head shoulder and the decreased diameter portion of the bolt. Hardness tests disclosed values in the acceptable range according to Lycoming specifications.
Probable cause
The fatigue fracture and separation of one rod end cap bolt. A factor in the accident was the nature of the terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA076
- Event ID
- 20001208X07194
- Case number
- LAX97LA076
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a90e5b0f773672a323ff1d3586c596b030bf38d68c29997152e50047fee631c4; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:32:04.696Z.