One time, this was back in my skydiving days so a very long time ago, the drop zone’s CASA 212 was down due to a bad hydraulic pump. The pump finally arrived and the DZO asked me to help him install it. He was a certified A&P, I just had a lot of experience wrenching on cars but it allowed me to get a lot of free jumps due to helping him out on things like this.

He handed me the pump, which was a LOT lighter than I expected and told me with a smile: “Don’t drop it.”

In inquired as to how much it cost and he replied: “$10,000.”

I was holding a pump in my hands that weighed barely 10 pounds that cost more than my car (this was circa 1998 or so).

A couple years later the igniter box on the port engine died and I helped him replace it… That was a cool $15000. The engines were about $250,000 a piece back in those days.

This is called the Jesus nut. It holds the main rotor onto the helicopter. It doesn’t have any redundancy, so if it fails, you’re going to be meeting Jesus in moments.