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.