Last fall I got a job offer down in Texas, for the winter. A friend of mine recently bought a 180, and had a few things he wanted done. The seat tracks on the right were the worst I've ever seen, he wanted a ugb-16 installed, tail pull handles and hollow axles installed. He has a private strip in New Hampshire and said the 180 would just Sit all winter, so I told him I would do the work in exchange for flying it. So I loaded up and headed to Texas. Flew it until February or so and started into it. Once I got down here I decided that I was going to stay longer than I though, and bought a super cub. The hollow axles were easy, got those on quick. Then I realized that the brakes were leaking and the pads were smoked. Re build both calipers, and new brake pads. While I was down there working on the brakes, I investigated the loud clunk In the gear on landing. Took the weight off the wheels, and found the gear was loose. It already had the pponk gear mod, but there was a missing shim and broken bolt on the gear box, outboard. Got a new one of those ordered and shimmed the gear. Went to the other side and found the same thing. Once that was done, that threw the original "alignment" off

Time to re shim the gear. Got the camber set, and toe in at zero. Bleed the brakes, and was done with the gear.
Then I moved on to the engine monitor.
When I was doing that, realized it has the old glass gascolator. Time to get rid of that. Found a few broken brackets, fixed those.

Chased a few oil leaks, replaced the oil cooler gaskets. Fixed some of the baffles. Got all of the engine back together and moved onto the seat tracks.

In the middle of all of this I was doing the annual. Fixing small things that have been neglected along the way.
when I was wiring up the monitor, we decided to add an avionics master. There wasn't one. Might as well put one in.
Then a box of bas harnesses came. Might as well, seems like the story of this plane. No pics of that yet. They are all done. We also put the tail pull handles in. Then put the interior back together. One step closer to getting it all done. When I was at sun n fun, I got some new door seals. Put the co pilots on, and when I removed the pilots side, found the door was cracked and corroded. Add that to the list. Finally, moved all the stuff and pushed the old girl outside to run it, check to make sure I got all the leaks.

My boss came out and asked what that sound is, sounds like a collapsed lifter. Maybe it's from sitting for 3 months. Well come to find out, after a compression check, the two middle cylinders, they were 10/80& 20/80. And leaking from the exhaust.

Pulled both of them off, and found this

So that's where we are now. Getting a couple new cylinders. The cylinders only have 800 hr on them sense overhaul. Apparently they were rebuilt. It appears that they were welded in the same place before.


