Activity Stream

Rear spar. I don't remember this wood plug on my wing. The front spar is obscured by the foam in the tip for now.

Gentlemen whoa whoa whoa......first off Thank You for voicing your concerns. EZflap if anyone thinks you are an asshole for trying to keep them safe tell them to run into your fist. Let me clarify my intentions!

These wings are ROUGH. They for sure need stripped down bare and restored before they would be anywhere near airworthy. My intentions for right now are to clean them up and get the crap out of the spars so that no further corrosion or deterioration occurs. These wings will be going to a good home at my Dads place with all of other Avid parts to be stored for a while longer. If and when we decide to use them it will be a total restoration project. I would not even sell them without stripping the fabric off first and ensuring the buyer knew EXACTLY what they were getting. Fingers crossed that the spars are good but if there ANY question I will be scrapping them and trying to save anything I can to build another set of wings. Again Thank You all for voicing your concerns. Communication breakdown is my biggest complaint of online communities.

With that said I like your ideas. One wing has a hole already cut in the bottom of the tip and there is a wood plug on the end of the forward spar that I can see and it's hysoled in. Wonder if I could drill a hole in the wood and plug my air hose into that. At this point I have no issues cutting fabric. The only reason I'm not going to strip them now is to try and preserve the ribs.

166NFlyer I like your idea but if I shove a tube down the spar it's going to just pack the junk in tighter at the end when it gets down there. I got the wings on sawhorses in the back yard tonight before it got dark after work. Hoping to work on them tomorrow for a while and get the fuse hosed out.

Doug,

There were some squawks, not on how the plane flew, but with the EFIS.  Most have since been fixed by getting compatible sending units and deleting unneeded info from the set-up.  By having redundant instrumentation the flight was able to be carried out.  Sometimes you have to wonder if the old steam guages aren't the simplist way to go.  Thanks for the comments though.

Jack

A person can get alot done if your having fun.Looks good.Randy

Took the day off here to get stuff done, here is what I accomplished re sleeved my new cylinder because I wanted to keep the original piston and sleeve together,  then welded my brake brackets to my landing gear. then made my support plates with the hopes that my fuselage doesn't get all bent up with this gear. and installed my landing gear. Damn time to have a beer.

I would get a piece of 1/2 pvc, plug the end with epoxy putty and drill about 4   1/16 holes angled away from the plugged end.  Insert it full length and then use compressed air to sweep the junk back out the fuselage end as you withdraw the pipe.  Repeat until clean.  Could also use water if air is not vigorous enough.  Could also use a sewer jetter tip on the end of an air hose. 

Mouse piss  - oh my! A flush with air and water sound like good idea to me Joey as you suggested.  What are you thoughts a good visual inspection - borescope might be in order for the areas beyond eye sight. I'd be concered about intergraular corrosion in the aluminum; that's where stress cracking could occur. But as Lenny points out, hopfully it was coated really well.  Speaking of coating, I've had great success fogging exposed metal with a 50/50 blend of Linseed Oil and WD-40.

Cut a hole in the fabric at the wing tip.  You can then blow air through to the open end.  plug the hole with a rag and the air hose and let it rip.  If the spars were coated as well as they looked in the pics, I am thinking there may not be as much if any corrosion in there.

Best case you have to put a patch on the fabric on the tip, worst case your still scraping the wing. 

Yeah...after I read your post but before I read EZFlap's I was going to suggest emoving the wingtip too. Just seems like the best idea to me.

Chris

I have to put on my a**-hole hat here and be the bad guy. Hang up my picture on the wall and start throwing darts at it, I can take it.

Sorry, but IMHO the best way is going to be removing the fiberglass tip altogether. I'm sure it's a PITA. If the wingtip is epoxy bonded on you can carefully pry it off the aluminum tubes with a chisel or a piece of scrap aluminum sharpened on a sander, and tap it into the joint with a mallet. Aluminum hates being glued, it shouldn't be that much effort to pop the glue joint. Unless they alodined and chem-filmed the aluminum before gluing, at which point you will put down the darts and pick up an M-60.

Considering that this is primary life-death structure, and you already know that you have some amount of mouse pee/poo in there, I believe it is definitely the right thing to do to remove anything and everything that is in the way of 100% full clear access to both ends of the tube.

I hate to be the a**-hole that puts this picture into your head, but you need to imagine how it will feel when the wife and kids (of the guy you sell this airplane to) call you and say that a wing spar tube gave way and that someone got hurt or killed. At that moment, the time you saved by not removing the fiberglass tip, or the covering, or whatever... won't amount to much.

Once you have this access, EVERYTHING gets easier... it will be much easier to remove the nests, see and quantify the damage/corrosion, clean out the corrosion with 100% confidence you got all of it out, do any repairs that are needed, re-treat the aluminum, etc.

OK, now where's that Kevlar vest I had laying around...

I am finishing the cleanup of my barn find this weekend. One wing was invaded by mice and both spars have nests way down toward the tip. When I redid my wings I used a round toilet brush on a pole to clean them out but they were in waaaay better condition than these ones. I am looking for suggestions on how to get the actual best material out of the spar and clean them up so I can evaluate the corrosion level inside the spar. Hoping the one wing is okay but I am not real optimistic at this point. Jet of water or compressed air with the wingtip up in the air maybe??

"The Book" is the overhaul manual which can be printed out from this site. It contains all torque specs and procedures for the 582. Everyone flying behind Rotax 2 strokes should print this great document out.

The grey head is the "mod 90" and the blue head is the "mod 99"  The book calls for the same tq specs for both.

Hey guys if anybody has torque specs on a 582 blue head please let me know. I am looking for the cylinder bolts that hold the jugs to the crank case, and also the head bolts, I know the head nuts on the grey head but wasn't sure if the bolts and nuts were the same torque.

I posted those picks of the leading edge wing extensions a while back, ( maybe three years ago ) and referred to them in a recent post. And I was out of high school for 11 years in 1980. Jim Chuk

The bottom of the fuselage is stock as far as I can tell. It could have a flat firewall installed if you wanted to, but the bottom of the firewall is stepped forward to give more legroom. Top of this step is just above the horizontal tube a bout 12" above the bottom of the front of the fuselage. Jim Chuk

I was in high school in the 80s. You're making me feel old...

I was out of college in the mid 80's... you guys are making me feel ANCIENT !

I was in high school in the 80s. You're making me feel old...

Good info! I will gladly credit whoever the original writer of this piece was. i wondered how they shared information back before the World Wide Web lol. Yes I was born in the 80s. Sorry Ed not trying to make you feel old 😄

It looks like that was number 38 but it says only for vixens, not sure but I would think it should be for all.

I'm pretty sure this stuff on this file was done by a guy named Lee Dubay waaay back in the late 80's. neat to see it all tabled in one source like this!!!

Awesome score Joey. Thanks for taking the time to share about it.

Hey Joey, thanks for going to the trouble to scan all that stuff in. It's interesting to read all that stuff (I've only had a chance to read parts of it so far). Helps shed some more light on the History of Avid. I liked looking at the old price lists too.

Luke D.

Can anyone verify whether that forward fuselage structure in the photo is stock Avid? My lower longerons do not extend as far forward as what is shown in that photo. The photo of Joey's barn find shows a fuselage that could have a flat firewall bolted to that tube structure... and the lower longerons on my airplane essentially stop at the last diagonal member. Is this one of the differences between the Avid B and C models... or is the one in Joey's photo a modified aircraft? I'm having a hell of a time designing an engine mount that fits my fuselage because of this.

Be sure to check out all the new pinned items in the Files and Forms area that I posted today. All of that came with this weekends Barn Find Avid and I scanned it in for your viewing pleasure.