The door is white

With the beautiful warm weather today I could not pass up getting a little painting done. The Redskins were playing so poorly I could not watch and headed to the shop to paint the lower door. I sanded the two coats of Poly Spray and prepped it for last last coat. Here's the final Poly Spray coat.

I let this dry for an hour then shot one cross coat of insignia white Ploytone . I will let this dry over night and if the temperature is warm enough tomorrow I will shoot the final coat. I will probably wait until the boot cowl is painted to shoot the red stripes. This finishes the lower door !

BC is all ready for Halloween ! He don't need no stinking costume !

Chili Flyin

Saturday the Trojan and I attended the annual chili fly-in at Hood Field (NC66) . The weather was absolutely beautiful and ADDS promised a tailwind on both legs(on the same day!) . I left Williamsburg at 08:45 and landed at NC66 at 10:05, for 122 mph. Sweet! The Fly-in was great , with many of the same planes as last year, here are a few pictures.

Just as forecast, about 1 pm the wind shifted and I had the same tailwind coming home. I returned to KAKQ in 1:10. With the tailwind that made it a $55.45 bowl of chili and a Pepsi , and the food was provided by Bill ! I left the Trojan at Wakefield, gathered up all the tools from last weeks work and headed home. A great day. 

Cowl repairs

Today I finished the repairs on the Trojan cowl, she now looks more like a battleship than an airplane ! For some reason all the Trojans I've seen have some kind of distress in this area. This was not too bad until the old inside patch started to crack. Someone made this from soft aluminum. My patch is from 2024T3 0.025 thick. I would have used 0.032 but I loaned my sheet to someone and I guess it did not get home yet. I really need to replace this whole section, but this is my flying airplane. Here is the new patch.

As you can see , I have stop drilled this crack several times. Must be some kind of vibration thing. I cut  out the cracked half of the old patch and increased the area of the doubler.

Well he's starting to look like an old battleship, but I don't think the Trojan cares as long as it's still flying. I will put this on tomorrow, supposed to be a nice cool day for a change.

Saturday I hope to attend the Chili flyin at Hood field, then Sunday will be back to work on the Cub. To my California readers PLEASE vote YES to prop 19.

Trojan Annual

Not much to report on the Cub project. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I had family duties as my last niece got married in Virginia Beach. Monday I started some maintenance on the Trojan. He had developed a crack in the lower cowling that needed to be fixed. Since the weather was forecast to be really warm this week, I decided to get this done before winter sets in. Kind of a pre-winter annual. Finished all the maintenance items today just need to rivet up the cowl. Here's a few pictures.

Hope to have this finished by Thursday and get back on the Cub.

The Jake is back !

Today Scott and I made the road trip to get the Jacobs for the Waco at the FedEx Freight facility in Richmond. This is a long story , but the short of it is, I was not happy with an overhaul I received  from Radial Engines Ltd. They volunteered to fix all my concerns at their expense, so I shipped it back on May 7, 2010. Initial inspection looks great, no more rust pitted cylinder barrels covered with glossy black paint. I have not yet received the paperwork so I'm not sure what the true extent of the work was. Today was a beautiful day for the road trip and everything went really smooth. I guess practice makes perfect. Here are a few pictures of the cylinders that I was not happy with. They were obviously very rusty at some time in their life. Since I paid money for a "new" limit overhaul, this is not what I was expecting.

  What really made these stand out was the cylinder right next to this one.

It's in near perfect condition. There were also some discrepancies with the limits on the engine build sheet and with the parts that were supposed to be replaced at the overhaul. When the paperwork arrives we'll see if these are corrected ( at least on paper).  It took so long, I was starting to worry if I would see it again, but it is finally back.  As you can see they replaced the 4 cylinders I did not like, no more rusty barrels.

So far I'm happy with what I see.
There was very little progress on the Cub yesterday, the "jack legs" from North Carolina drilled a bunch of holes in the new boot cowling, almost all in the wrong place. Not sure I can save this, I was surprised to find this is only $450 from Univair. When I recover the fuselage I will just get a new one. Here are a few shots of he quality work.

They did do a nice job of filling the wrong holes with JB Weld ! Still not sure what I will do here. This and the rain took the fun out of the project yesterday.
Today after I got back the temperature was just right for another coat of Poly Spray , and I had just enough time to get-er-done. It's amazing how that second coat of paint covers and fills the finish. I will let this dry a day then sand and put on the finish coats. Here it is with two cross coats of Poly Spray.

And I had to put it on just to see how it looked.

My parts from Univair arrived today, so tomorrow I will finish the throttles and the gascolator installation. Hopefully I can come up with a work around for the boot cowling.

Poly Spary

Got a slow start on the Cub today, started by ironing all the tapes on the door one more time. After lunch the sun came out and I shot one cross coat of Poly Spray. The temperature was right at 68F and the humidity was right on the edge of causing blushing. I wanted to get two coats on but it clouded up and the temp dropped so I had to bag the spraying for today. The forecast is for rain tomorrow then another stretch of beautiful dry weather so I should have no trouble getting her done. Here it is after one cross coat.

After giving up on the painting I worked on the boot cowling. I developed a work around for some problems with the the mount to fuselage bolts and I think it will be OK. The two rows of holes the previous owners mechanic drilled in the wrong location are more problematic. I will probably have to drill out the lower center line rivets to get the bottom to fit tightly. Since the panel defines the upper curve of the boot cowl I had that fitted today. Here are a couple shots.

I realized today that when installed you can see the upper edge of the back side of the instrument panel , so I will have to paint the forward/back side flat black. I will wait till it's all fitted. According to my boss, tomorrow is rain so will work on boot cowl. Thursday is a trip to Richmond to get the re-overhauled Jacobs. Friday will be a painting day. Here he is giving me some pointers on painting.

More rubber cement

Well I usually don't work much on the weekends But the Redskins did not play until 8:30 so I worked on the door a little. After the yard chores I finished taping the lower door, I bet I have close to 6 hours in stitching and taping this door! I'm not sure why it took so long, there are a lot of corners and nooks and crannies. It came out fine for the beater Cub, not Grand Champion but airworthy. Today I moved the fuselage outside and shot the two spray coats of rubber cement(poly-brush) . Here I am giving it a little QA inspection.

The college kids next door call this the Ghost Buster suit. Here is the finished product, of course the inside came out much nicer than the outside!

Since the weather was beautiful and I had to wait for this to dry, I decided to strip some paint. The boot cowl is almost finished so I needed to strip some previous owners failed attempt at painting. Thank goodness they just used spray cans , that made it a fairly easy job. I got these great gloves at Harbor Freight to protect my arms from the inevitable splash of stripper. Cool huh !

These windshield strips took the most time, I lost count of how many coats/colors of paint I removed.

The used plastic is great for stripping and sandblasting. It's way too "dusty" to use for painting again.
Here is the boot cowl all stripped .

This is about it for the day, after the painting and then having my feet wet for 2 hours I was done for the day. Depending on the accuracy of the weather man, I will either work on the boot cowl or shoot Poly-Spray tomorrow. Really need to finish the fabric work before it gets too cold. The lower door will finish all the fabric.

Success and disappointment

Made a (very) little progress on the Cub yesterday. Started working on the Carb heat cable and well. It was all in good shape and everything went pretty smooth. Here it is all installed.

After finishing this I decided to install the fuel tank and hook up the fuel shutoff control. With the boot cowl off this is easy to get to. If you remember, all these parts were completed in previous posts. Hopefully all this will be trouble free for years. Here it is , works great.

When I got home from lunch there was a package on my front porch. I finally received the set of bungee covers I ordered from Airtex 3 weeks ago. Cool that will finish off the landing gear ! I really was not expecting much from Airtex and that is exactly what I got. When I took the first one from the box , something fell off. When I looked closer , one of the snaps that holds it on was improperly swaged and had fallen off! Here is a picture of it right out of the box.

I am completely unimpressed with the overall fit and finish. Along the main seam there are 5 snaps and they were not even close to straight. So I pick up the phone to call them, to add insult to injury , while I'm on hold I have to listen to this sales pitch about their quality products and FAA approval! Mike says, send it back and they will fix it? This is just another example of a family business run into the ground by the children. I ordered a set of these from Univair last week, I may just bite the bullet on the 15% restocking fee and let Airtex keep their set.  
After shipping these back I was so steamed I lost motivation on the Cub. Since it was kinda cold and rainy I spent the afternoon watching TV with my bud.

Fitting interior placards

Today was spent completing some of the interior . After studying  the parts manual, I managed to figure out the throttle friction system. I have all the parts except some of the fiber friction washers are worn slam out. I had to order these from Univair so were looking at least a week delay. I will have everything ready when they get here. I assembled the throttles just to check how everything fit, the placards just look OK. Fine for the beater Cub.

 After that I worked on the trim placard, all this went pretty smooth. The only thing I don't like is the crank escutcheon cover from Univair covers some of the writing. Operationally it works great. Here it is all assembled.

Next I worked on the fuel shut off lever. I took the best parts from three of these I had bought off of Ebay over the last couple years. Univair wants $212 for the shut off cable. I cleaned and lubricated the cable housing and assembled it with the painted knob and cable. It was hard to get this into the fuselage recess without bending the soft aluminum where the cable housing goes through. With some patience I managed to get it looking acceptable. Works great.

Here is a shot of the whole left side of the inside fuselage.

The rest of the afternoon was spent putting the finishing tapes on the lower door, almost got it finished. I'm still trying to figure out how to make the strut cutout on the door look professional. It's a tricky compound curve.
I really can't stand the  MEK fumes anymore so I wear my HobbyAir all the time now.

That's it for today, supposed to be rainy tomorrow so I will probably work on the boot cowling.