Update from Dale...

Guys,

Here are a few pictures of the Cub repair progress. The pictures show some of the new parts we purchased. The new left landing gear is recovered in two coats of pink stuff. The engine with the new cylinder installed. The left wing tip repaired and recovered in two coats of pink stuff. Darrel is cleaning the areas to be glued back to the frame and taking the old tapes off. The tubing is now straight and there are some small reinforcement pieces to be welded on and then we will cover the tail section and put the corner tapes and pink stuff on them. The other landing gear parts you see on the floor are painted and ready to go back when the landing gear is painted. The new tire (not shown) is mounted back on the wheel and is ready for its new landing gear. The seat area is now straightened out and ready for the cushions to be reinstalled. We still have a lot of painting and blending to do we need the temperature to get up to about 55 deg to do that. The side windows need to be reinstalled. We took them out to make access to the seat area and cabin area that needed repairs. I am encouraged by the progress we are making I really feel we will have it flying again in late January or February If we get the warmer weather we need (where is global warming when you need it).

I would like to thank the volunteers we have had come out and give some of their time Paul Lips, Will Ware, Darrel Carver and of course Doug for supervising the work and putting up with all of the questions he has to answer for us. Doug you will have to thank the young man that came out two nights form ATP to help, sorry I forgot his name I never got a chance to meet him.

Dale

Trudging on

Trudging on

Dale got more repairs done today. The gear struts and cabane is painted "Sunflower Yellow". It doesn't look like it will match but J3 yellow is nowhere to be found any more. The gear leg is in the pink now and ready to be sprayed. It was to cold to do it today. Some of the rear fuselage has been recovered as well as the hole patched.

Intern

This is our new intern A&P Trenton. He wants to get his license so is glad to help while getting some good experiance.

Tail repair

Doug and Dale have already corrected the damage to the tail. they just need to weld in one small tube. I spend the evening smelling MEK and removing paint down to the fabric to allow us to close up the tail and prep from paint. Every place that the fabric was cut, I need to remove paint back 2 inches. This will allow us to re-glue and patch the repaired areas.

Gear Repair

Well, the left main took the brunt of the damage. It folded under the aircraft. Doug ordered new gear from Univair. We still need to paint it and get it installed. 

Wing tip damage

The tip damage was really not bad at all. Doug and Dale cut open the fabric to reveal a small bend in the tip bow bracket. They corrected it and now just waiting for me to clean the paint off and repair the cover.

 

Will does some work...

Well I went to the hangar on tuesday night to do a little bit of work on the J3.  When I opened the door, she looked pretty sad resting on one landing gear leg. Two saw horses were replacing the other two grounding points.

Visit

Well I finally got a chance to drop by and take a look at the Cub last night. When I arrived both Doug and Dale were there working on the RV. 

The tailpost damage has all been repaired and is ready to be recovered. The left wing tip damage was very minor and that is ready for recover too. The left gear took the brunt of the damage. Univair gear was bought to replace most all of the gear pieces. They just need painting and install. One of the engine cylinders has been removed for low compression as well.

NEXT....

1. Clean all of the areas that need to be recovered with MEK.

2. Paint and install landing gear

3. Install cylinder

Looks like we  might be back in the air soon!

Great Job Doug, Dale and everyone else that helped!

Will

parts

The landing gear parts came in yesterday. Now we need to wait for the fabric stuff and paint so we can put it together.

It's getting better

All the bent parts are now straight. There is one piece of tubing that has to be welded in. The ole one has been cut out and the new one formed to be welded in. The hard part was convincing Dale he HAD to crawl into the fuselage to straighten out the square 1/4" metal formers around the baggage compartment. See the pictures to see how happy he is.
The wing bow brackets were bent just a little bit and straightened right out and when reinstalled it took the wrinkles out of the top of the wing. Go figure. Course it now needs to be patched. The back seat area wrinkles came out with a little heat gun action. At this point we are waiting for the parts to come in to start the patching

more damage

Dale removed the cylinder tonight that had no compression. It is the brand new one that we just put on. Has a toatal of about 3 hours. Found some more unexpected damage also tonight. The cabane, the other gear shock strut and the left gear has a kink in it so I think I will replace it instead of fix it.

Work on the Tail Section

12-2-2007
Dale has removed the tail surfaces and removed the fabric from the tail area. The frame tubing was curved in a big gentle bow so we straightened it out with a 2x4 and a sledge hammer. Missed the spot once and went through the fabric so there is a little more fabric work needed than first planned. We made some supports to set the fuselage on so the landing gear could be removed. Paul came out and took removed it.