Reach out and build something

Last week I received the 4130 steel tubes and plates required for the repair : ) I also took the opportunity to order new ignition cables (as recommended by my friend and Pitts mentor, François) as well as plenty of AN hardware to replace the old one:





The 1" OD X 0.120" wall tube that is going to serve as a sleeve over the bottom longerons per Steen plans is impressively massive:

I brought all this to the welding shop last week-end. My welder Mark did a great job of removing all the crap from the bad repair with minimal intrusion to the tubes to be preserved. In the process, he discovered that the lower longerons already had internal sleeves in good shape, and securely welded! This is good news since it's going to provide better stiffness continuity all the way up to the forward end of the longerons. However, the sections of each lower longerons where the side diagonals were welded were in such a bad condition that we chose to saw them off:

These will be replaced with sections of 3/4" OD X 0.035" tube (same as the longeron) over which the 1" external sleeve will be welded later on.

Next step is to perform a dye-penetrant inspection on many locations of the foward fuse to ensure we are aware of all the cracks to be repaired before welding the new tubes in place. The items I intend to focus on during this inspection are:

1. Lower longerons (in case there is more than the 2 cracks I found)
2. Fuel tank attachment bushings
3. Lower wing attachment bushings
4. Flying wire attachment lugs

While the clean up process was being finished at the welding shop, I made some work on my nosebowl at the hangar. I intend to dedicate a post on this shortly. Stay Tuned!