Picked up a Citabria 2 years ago and can finally start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Bought it and trailered it home because it sat for over 10 years. Pulled a couple cylinders off to check the cam and it had a few lobes with rust. So I did a complete overhaul on the engine with new cam and followers, luckily it only had 1000hrs TT so the crank was fine. Next item on the list were the Millman Aluminum Spars. The wood spars had a crack in the left front spar along with both wings missing around 15 nails in each wing. The fusealage was in rough shape as well, all the formers and stringers were warped or rotten. The plane spent most of its life on floats or skis and the airframe had light rust along bottom longerons.

More pictures

Sand blasted the airframe, painted first coat with Zinc Chromate followed by a second coat of Epoxy Primer.








Installed the Scout gear and Tail Spring.

Your plan is looking strong dude! Keep the information coming. I like the photographs very much.

Thanks for the pics. I'm a Champion fan. How did you like working with the Millman spars? I'm considering them for my Aeronca.

The spars were great. The install was very straight forward and everything was pre-drilled and fit perfectly. The hardest thing about the whole spar assembly was trameling the wing. I had to call them and they walked me through the whole process. If I had to do it over again, I would spend the extra money and order there leading edge kit.

Installed new firewall insulation and a new style six pack panel. Epoxy primed the heat boxes and had engine mount powder coated.






Built a removable extended baggage compartment.


Installed Rainbow Ron's new formers and stringers.

N300RE, great project, and thank you for posting the images. As you know there have been some outstanding detailed pix/process descriptions on this site of some Cessna projects, and there are a ton of such over on the Supercub site, but this is the first one I've seen of a Citabria or its contemporary kin, This will be invaluable for someone in the future, great to see it coming together.

Thanks. cubscout

Nice buildup pictures. Keep the hints coming, I've got to do the same in a couple years. Post some pictures of how you install the skylight - that's what I've got to do next as the roof fabric is getting kinda punky. I guess with the extended baggage compartment the battery is going somewhere else.
Did you go with Scout steel or aluminium gear?

Project looks great. Will you be installing a cargo door as well? That was one mod I always wanted to put on my 7GCBC. Also curious why you went with Millman spars instead of factory aluminum? Price mostly? I am not a AME so by the time I would pay one to do the spar replace, fabric, etc, it would not be much cheaper then buying new wings. That way you have new tanks, ribs, struts and all. Plus the gross weight increase would be very nice on a Citabria...
David

Great project. Is it me and my computer or are most of the pixs upside down.

Doug

Upside down for me too..but then it is aerobatic. It is the way he's going to fly the thing when it's done, isn't it?

I though he just liked working on it that way.

I had the same problem last time I posted pictures - assumed it was my inability to understand the process. Can anyone explain how to invert them?

It's not anyone's fault except the forum software developers and maybe the browser developers. You'll notice the photos show up fine in OP's gallery. They show up oriented correctly if you open them separately in a new tab. They only appear oriented wrong in the forum post. Why? There's no good reason.

This is because that's how those images are oriented in regard to the camera's sensor. They appear correctly oriented in other software because that software reads their EXIF meta data and sees that the iPhone or whatever coded the image with "Orientation: Rotate 180" which, in order to be displayed correctly, has to be obeyed by the displaying software.

I've looked into it a little, but it's still kind of a hot topic in development discussions. It's a mystery why this forum software reorients them.

pouellette wrote:..but then it is aerobatic. It is the way he's going to fly the thing when it's done, isn't it?

Good point, hadn't thought of that.

Zzz, still upside down when opened in new tab, oh well. We'll just pretend he is already flying.

Doug

DRLpatrol wrote:

pouellette wrote:..but then it is aerobatic. It is the way he's going to fly the thing when it's done, isn't it?

Good point, hadn't thought of that.

Zzz, still upside down when opened in new tab, oh well. We'll just pretend he is already flying.

Doug

They look correctly oriented on mobile Safari (iPad) but not in desktop Safari. What browser?

Karmutzen wrote:Nice buildup pictures. Keep the hints coming, I've got to do the same in a couple years. Post some pictures of how you install the skylight - that's what I've got to do next as the roof fabric is getting kinda punky. I guess with the extended baggage compartment the battery is going somewhere else.
Did you go with Scout steel or aluminium gear?

I moved the battery to the firewall, ACA sells the firewall mounts. I went with the steel gear because they were 900$ a piece from ACA and the Aluminum gears were around 2700$ a piece i think. Guess I forgot from the sticker shock.

A1Skinner wrote:Project looks great. Will you be installing a cargo door as well? That was one mod I always wanted to put on my 7GCBC. Also curious why you went with Millman spars instead of factory aluminum? Price mostly? I am not a AME so by the time I would pay one to do the spar replace, fabric, etc, it would not be much cheaper then buying new wings. That way you have new tanks, ribs, struts and all. Plus the gross weight increase would be very nice on a Citabria...
David

I did install the cargo door, luckily enough I was able to strip a 2006 7GCBC at a salvage yard that had 60hrs TT. I got baggage door, stainless control cables, and the new style toe brake conversion. I went with the Millman Spars because of the price and I'm an A&P so working on it wouldn't be a problem.

Zzz, I tried both IE and Chome, same results.

Doug

Here are some more pictures, hopefully right side up. Some are repeats.


[img]http://www.backcountrypilot.org/images/originalphotos/3835/3790/f371b441ace3f7963f7bb565.jpg[img]