Maintenance Airframe; Maintenance Powerplant
Communication Breakdown
Aircraft Equipment Problem Less Severe; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General Maintenance Action
Aircraft; Company Policy; Manuals
Through a LOSA observation; Aircraft X main wheel tires were brought to our attention during a service check. The technician noticed that the valve stems that were installed on all of the aircraft tires was a large-bore type versus the conventional small-bore type valve stem. This raised concerns as to the effectivity of the main wheel tire since the small-bore type; through years of experience; have always been installed on Company fleet of Airbus A319/A320. Upon further research; LOSA looked at other tire assemblies installed on aircrafts around the maintenance base and Airbus serviceable tire rack assemblies and found part numbers that were not being reflected in the IPCs for the nose and main tires. Part numbers 1531 and 1584 for the nose tires and 1590 for the main tires were observed. In addition; all tires that we looked at had the small-bore type valve stems.Whether or not this is the right configuration for Company Airbus fleet; clarification is needed to determine effectivity. If the larger bore type valve stem is effective for the airbus A319/A320; one of the concerns is that these aircrafts may fly to a station that may not have the adapter to service the tires because stations are not aware of the two different wheel assembly configurations.I have attached two sets of IPCs; one for the main wheels and the other for the nose wheel tires. The first set reflects the aircraft nose number in question; 4871; 4107). Aircraft X was a random nose number chosen to reflect an Airbus IPC.I have also attached the CMM reference 32-XX-XX which is referenced by the IPC. The CMM has an effectivity table published but I could not find the legend to define the codes. Photos of the larger-bore type valve stems and the smaller-bore valve stems have been attached which came from the aircraft that was in question. A few of the photos were taken from wheel assemblies on the serviceable racks.We reached out to All Fleet Engineer and explained to him our issues. He requested paperwork and pictures which we have not yet been able to forward to him.
Technician reported large bore valve stems installed on nose wheel assemblies and not documented correctly.