ironnerd
Well-Known Member
Hey all.
Looking for honest advise on my project. This may not be exactly the right place, but it's a wood plane, and this seems a rather woody place.
I purchased my mostly complete 1700 Hi-Max a few years ago. I finally have it in a hangar where I can work on it and I have found that it has some issues.
When I got it into the hangar, I found that the plywood on the fuselage was delaminating (cockpit, root ribs, and longerons). I thought, "Darn... that sucks...". So I took all that bad plywood off, and I started sanding with my palm sander to remove the last layer of veneer/epoxy off the structure. As I was sanding, a glue joint on a diagonal brace popped lose. I thought, "Well, that's not cool," and continued sanding. Then another glue joint failed as I was sanding the cockpit structure. I also noticed that a few of the gussets in the aft fuselage looked a little off. I pushed on one, and it came apart under my thumb... so did a couple of others.
Honestly, if this were your project that you planned to fly, what would you do?
Don't worry about the monetary side. I ... got a deal ... I was also able to sell the engine for about 1/4 of the entire project purchase cost... and it's a Hi-Max, so we're not talking 50k here. Not even 2k.
Thank you all in advance for your sage advice.
Looking for honest advise on my project. This may not be exactly the right place, but it's a wood plane, and this seems a rather woody place.
I purchased my mostly complete 1700 Hi-Max a few years ago. I finally have it in a hangar where I can work on it and I have found that it has some issues.
When I got it into the hangar, I found that the plywood on the fuselage was delaminating (cockpit, root ribs, and longerons). I thought, "Darn... that sucks...". So I took all that bad plywood off, and I started sanding with my palm sander to remove the last layer of veneer/epoxy off the structure. As I was sanding, a glue joint on a diagonal brace popped lose. I thought, "Well, that's not cool," and continued sanding. Then another glue joint failed as I was sanding the cockpit structure. I also noticed that a few of the gussets in the aft fuselage looked a little off. I pushed on one, and it came apart under my thumb... so did a couple of others.
Honestly, if this were your project that you planned to fly, what would you do?
Don't worry about the monetary side. I ... got a deal ... I was also able to sell the engine for about 1/4 of the entire project purchase cost... and it's a Hi-Max, so we're not talking 50k here. Not even 2k.
Thank you all in advance for your sage advice.
