Glad you’re enjoying it Keith. The plane did indeed spend its whole 20 year life outside on the line at a flight school. Rain ingress combined with condensation over the years makes that wood get wet and start warping. Primarily, it was the rain combined with the rental crowd who doesn’t care if/when they notice some standing water in the fuselage.

When we picked up the plane, it was sitting outside in the Sierra foothills for weeks during some hard rain and there was standing water on the bottom of the fuselage that we had to mop up.

It helps to have some seaplane grommets installed to let the water get sucked out during flight, but those weren’t installed when it was first covered at the factory.

This is a great thread, thanks for posting! Cool project!

Kurt

Great thread and congrats on the Citabria. My first plane was a 7ECA so I have a soft spot for them!

My fabric has been on the fuselage of my Sedan since '83 but mostly in dry climates. I'm curious to see what the wood looks. Burl makes aluminum formers to replace the wood which I will probably do.


Looking forward to seeing how this little jewel turns out...you have a bit of a reputation for good looking airplanes!

G44 wrote:This is a great thread, thanks for posting! Cool project!

Kurt

Thanks for following along Kurt. My pleasure.

akaviator wrote:Great thread and congrats on the Citabria. My first plane was a 7ECA so I have a soft spot for them!

My fabric has been on the fuselage of my Sedan since '83 but mostly in dry climates. I'm curious to see what the wood looks. Burl makes aluminum formers to replace the wood which I will probably do.


Looking forward to seeing how this little jewel turns out...you have a bit of a reputation for good looking airplanes!

Thanks, I hope this one comes out as pretty as others we’ve done. We’re leaning towards a non stock paint scheme on the fuselage with some black/white checkerboard pattern on the tail somewhere and maybe on the nose.

The Sedan is one of my favorites! I owned serial number 136 for a few years before it went to Canada. It was impossible to justify owning a 170B and the Sedan since they fulfilled the same mission. The cabin in the Sedan was HUGE and the left side seaplane door was epic.

Sometimes I regret keeping the 170B and letting the Sedan go. I wish I could keep them all!

http://n1331h.com/sedan_gallery/15ac-136_n120rm/

"Sometimes I regret keeping the 170B and letting the Sedan go. I wish I could keep them all!"

You've got a pretty sweet line up:)

Thanks, I just love these old planes. I’m on the list for a big box hangar and hope I get it before I’m too old to enjoy filling it up!

Front floorboard, boot cowl, headliner, windshield, and all windows except the right rear removed today.

Front floor area



Right side



Left side



Behind the instrument panel



Front pedals



Main gear attach



Backside of headliner



I don’t think we are going to reuse or reinstall wood floorboards. They make some out of carbon fiber which will be way lighter, and instead of installing carpet, we’ll have some polished aluminum kick plates where your heels rest.



Carpet goes in the trash.



The inside of the boot cowl was covered in crumbly foam stuck on with adhesive. The metal will be totally cleaned and then etch primed.



The fuselage has a bunch of drain holes. But they weren’t effective enough for the neglect this plane got as a rental all its life.

Nearest the tail moving forward in the following pics











This was a flying aircraft just last week!











Thanks for following along and more to follow soon.

Did water ingress sources leave any discoloration trace on the inside of the fabric?

Yea the floor needs better material. And carpeting...what were they thinking. I cleaned mine periodically but one trip on floats with wet muddy boots and it was there forever.

I see the factory finally changed from the old gear clamp U-bolts to something better. I had to replace them with Northland Av machined blocks when I did the first Scout gear approval.

Gary

With as much water as has been in that belly I'd make sure that there none in the V just above the gear that the gear attaches to. The scout I rebuilt last winter had a bunch in there. Not sure how it got in, but it's not there anymore.

PA1195 wrote:Did water ingress sources leave any discoloration trace on the inside of the fabric?

Yea the floor needs better material. And carpeting...what were they thinking. I cleaned mine periodically but one trip on floats with wet muddy boots and it was there forever.

I see the factory finally changed from the old gear clamp U-bolts to something better. I had to replace them with Northland Av machined blocks when I did the first Scout gear approval.

Gary

Yeah, you could see stains on the fabric and the wood where the water always sat.

The carpet was so gross after 20 years. Rental aircraft get no love. The carpet in my 170B is 10 years old and still looks new, but that’s because I’m careful about who I let in.

A1Skinner wrote:With as much water as has been in that belly I'd make sure that there none in the V just above the gear that the gear attaches to. The scout I rebuilt last winter had a bunch in there. Not sure how it got in, but it's not there anymore.

Thanks for the heads up. We plan on removing the gear and the engine before the fuselage tubing is all inspected, any defects rehabilitated, and then everything will be repainted.

Pump shop air into the fuselage and look for openings and weak spots. I did that at the tail tubing drains on my former PA-11 and blew out some good chunks that needed addressing but were unseen. Any voids will whistle.

That gear V is a low spot and welds don't assure water tight connections with tubing higher up. Investigate. Scouts add doublers and reinforcement above the gear-frame bracket and to the V.

Check landing gear curve, tire toe in, and lateral geometry before covering in case something needs correction.

Gary

Thanks for posting that valuable info for others Gary.

This is our 7th airframe restoration on this type certificate and there will be detailed pics of the whole process as it unfolds.

I apologize for my enthusiasm in your project. I wish I could go back 45 yrs to my 7ECA. I'm looking forward to the restoration.

Gary

I'll apologize for the dumb question but...

Can the seaplane grommets be added later to a plane that was covered without using them? Or do they have to be installed before / during covering?

Perhaps you should introduce your cast of characters. I'm guessing there's some experience lurking around that hangar.

PA1195 wrote:I apologize for my enthusiasm in your project. I wish I could go back 45 yrs to my 7ECA. I'm looking forward to the restoration.

Gary

I bet you know something, maybe a lot of things I don’t! Each one of these birds are different after they live their lives out on the ramp and I sure haven’t seen every way these things can break. It’s really valuable for others to hear everything from everyone who has experience with them so keep it coming.

If anything, I need to apologize for my ego. Instead of being open to maybe learning something new it’s easy to feel insecure and get caught up in making sure everyone knows we know what we’re doing.

Such is the internet...if you were at my airport dropping by to check this out we would never have this issue. [emoji482]

kg wrote:I'll apologize for the dumb question but...

Can the seaplane grommets be added later to a plane that was covered without using them? Or do they have to be installed before / during covering?

Perhaps you should introduce your cast of characters. I'm guessing there's some experience lurking around that hangar.

No dumb questions, and in line with my previous post, nothing makes an internet cowboy happier than to answer questions and appear knowledgeable. (Notice I said “appear”? Because just when you think you know something, you’re bound to step in it and get something wrong!)

So if you really want to add those grommets, it’s the same as repairing a tear or putting a patch on.

You’d take the fabric down to a bare layer, glue the grommets on, and then take it back up through the process in each spot you added them. Then you use a soldering iron and poke a perfect little hole in each grommet.

Poly Fiber makes it possible to do this pretty easily. If the fabric has been improperly painted with urethane paint or something else that doesn’t let you easily take it off, you’re screwed and can’t add them.

We are going to try to get approval from our local FSDO to use Oratex. It won’t match the Poly Fiber wings, but a carefully planned paint scheme can minimize that issue. We’ve never covered an airplane in that stuff and it’s really appealing not to have any chemicals whatsoever!

I do have an extensive RC modeling background and have constructed little airplanes using Solartex, which is a lighter version of Oratex. That was wonderful stuff to work with. Very easy to get a beautiful finish, and no painting...just stick it on, shrink it, and you’re done.

———-

As for the cast of characters, there’s really one one that matters. The rest of the folks you see are just enthusiastic helpers, but the principal on this project is my stepdad John.



John has been flying fixed wing since the early 1970’s and rotary wing since the 1980’s. He’s been crazy about airplanes ever since I’ve known him, which started when I was 10 years old and he married my mom.

He’s always shared his knowledge with me and my brothers (whether we cared about it or not!) and by the time I was 18, I had already had a hand in a few restoration projects with him. I was really into girls, British sports cars, and Japanese sport bikes at the time, so I stupidly didn’t take advantage of the leg up into aviation I had from him and didn’t pursue anything in aviation until much later.

John has had nearly 50 airframes in his lifetime and many of them were literal basket cases. He is an A&P/IA which makes all this stuff possible. I’m 42 years old now and am finally planning to use all this airframe and powerplant experience I’ve gained under John to go take my tests and get my A&P.

It’s funny, you spend your entire youth looking forward to the time you get to strike out on your own away from your parents, and then you (and they) get older and you want to spend as much time together as you can.

It’s not hard to do that with John because he not only has awesome projects going all the time, but he’s also a great instructor. He was adamant about giving me my primary training in a tailwheel, which was pretty cool IMO. At the time I didn’t think so, but now it’s a major point of pride for me.

The icing on the cake is that it was in the 170B that has been in my family for 25 years and is in my care now. The plane was previously owned by one of John’s students, and when the owner passed away in the early 1990’s, John and my uncle bought the plane.

Anyways, other aviation firsts that I’m really proud of and John has helped me achieve is that he got me soloed in his Starduster Too. That was actually more exciting to me than my first solo as a student!

An open cockpit biplane with wires singing in the wind, almost zero visibility on landing, and lets you wear a leather flying helmet is something special that I recommend every aviator experience if they have the means to do so.

Just pulling up to the fuel pit in that beast with the fuel injected Continental E-225 loudly booming “CHA-CHUNK CHA-CHUNK CHA-CHUNK” at idle with straight pipes and a fixed pitch wooden prop was half the fun of that plane!



John also taught my uncle to fly in the late 1980’s, and he has gone through a few cool airplanes too. His current beast is this Extra 300 which has a custom carbon fiber wing with full span ailerons.



So with all this said, I’d love to be like John and row through old planes fixing them up but I have an attachment and love affair with the 170B which I can’t let go. It’s just slow enough to make me feel annoyed, but just quick enough for me to continue to deal with it! As my two kids grow up, it isn’t going to handle the payload so having another airplane is definitely in the cards until someone else in my family is ready to become the custodian.

I’m sure you’re sorry you asked now! I apologize for the long winded post, but like I said earlier...don’t give an internet cowboy the chance to talk or they may never shut up! [emoji16]

The number one thing John has taught me about aviation is...





...REAL AVIATORS FLY TAILDRAGGERS! [emoji41]

Little thread creep, but is that Vicky Benzing’s old Extra? Most of us want it easier after wrastlin’ an old Stearman around - she went the other way.

Yes it is!

Rocky Hill owned it before her and there are some wild video of him doing his Tumble Time routine in it on YouTube.

Here it is in formation with Vicky in her single hole Extra.

kg wrote:I'll apologize for the dumb question but...

Can the seaplane grommets be added later to a plane that was covered without using them? Or do they have to be installed before / during covering?

Perhaps you should introduce your cast of characters. I'm guessing there's some experience lurking around that hangar.

If the plane is covered in using Stewart's systems you may not need to use grommets. You can simply poke a small hole with a soldering iron in the low corners of the bays as long as the finishing tapes are wide enough to extend past the hole.

Aryana, if you do end up using Oratex, consider doing the belly after the sides. Backwards I know, but this allows you to get up and play some glue on the stringers. This allows you to fill the gap so dirt and moisture won't sit there, as well as attach the fabric to the stringer. This will result in the fabric no chafing in those areas so you wont require tapes on every stringer like the legacy systems. Lars up in Alaska can explain it much better then I can I'm sure, but it works well.

David

Thanks David, I’m hoping we get approval to try the Oratex out and appreciate any pointers.