And, and, and it's a long, deep dark rabbit hole

Mapleflt wrote:And, and, and it's a long, deep dark rabbit hole

Exactly... The upgrades are done, just fixing stuff now - 60 years of use and patches - revitalising this airframe. But not upgrading just to be upgrading.

I'd really enjoy seeing more pics when you get everything finished up.

Well firewall is off - have some some access to clean some of the 60 years of gunk out of places that would normally be very hard to get access to. Couple of minor things while we are here. I swear at some point we are going to start putting this back together.

Could you take a close up of the edge where it makes the 90 bend to make the flange---- in the corner area where the engine mount bolts up? Wondering what the metal looks like----is it just bunched up and flattened or ????? Thank you

180Marty wrote:Could you take a close up of the edge where it makes the 90 bend to make the flange---- in the corner area where the engine mount bolts up? Wondering what the metal looks like----is it just bunched up and flattened or ????? Thank you

this is the best picture I have:

The saga continues... waiting for the pponk build to be completed, and uncovered another issue. This one would actually be damn near impossible to find without the plane in the state of disassembly that I'm currently in, you would just never really have access to find this.

This is my right upper engine stringer with a nice size crack:



Decided that a replacement would be better than trying to repair it, got one from salvage:


Cleaned up, anodize and riveted back together and ready to go back into the plane:

How well did the holes line up? Curious how consistent the factory templates were.

Cannon wrote:How well did the holes line up? Curious how consistent the factory templates were.

surprisingly well - I think we had to upsize the front two rivets

Good catch, and nice looking work.

This is what the stringer looks like in the later 180's so the crack you found would be easier to see but the bracket the engine mount attaches to would be harder to see---go figure.

180Marty wrote:This is what the stringer looks like in the later 180's so the crack you found would be easier to see but the bracket the engine mount attaches to would be harder to see---go figure.

Oh interesting - almost looks like they flipped the bracket upside down. So yeah you would be able to see the crack easier in that configuration - almost impossible to see it on my model. Thanks for the pic - that looks pretty clean!

Obviously a lot of work, and no doubt more than you expected, but you are going to be really happy in the end. Nice job!

My 175 project plane has similar mounts to these later 180 mounts and there is an AD on the brackets. It seems the heat treating was incorrect and motors were falling off or drooping on hard landings. When we pulled mine out three of them were cracked.

When we pulled mine out three of them were cracked.

Interesting, did you remove the firewall to get at them? I assume you mean the small U shaped brackets right up next to the firewall.

Yes it was the u shaped brackets and yes we removed the firewall. We had the firewall off for some corrosion issues and we also cleaned up the pedal assembly, replaced the pedal bushings and beefed up a couple of weak areas in the boot cowl area.

Oh, man, this thread is giving me the Willie’s. That’s one DEEP rabbit hole! Good for you for hanging in there. When it’s done, you’ll have a great ride, and you’ll know it extremely well.

MTV

I have seen U brackets cracked on 2 C-175s, I found 3 cracked when replacing the firewall on the one. The other happened to a friend, plane was used hard with many off field landings. 0-360 constant speed prop TW. After takeoff at about 200 ft. the cowling pulled forward about 3 inches, he could see the top of the engine. Landed straight ahead on a road. Plane dissembled and hauled in, during unloading engine and cowling assembly fell to the ground. This is serious!!! Inspect per the AD.

Plane dissembled and hauled in, during unloading engine and cowling assembly fell to the ground. This is serious!!! Inspect per the AD.

"Thank you" and "Like"

Motor mount stringer from my 150/150. This was the lower right one but they were all bad in my plane. Any plane that has seen abuse or a power increase or even high time needs to have these looked at very closely.