Rack on tracks

My apologies for the lousy title... running out of rack jokes now. Yesterday was a big day in my repair process since my welder was coming at the airport to pick up the fuselage.

The day started with the last step of the homework he gave me before picking up the fuselage: burn off the paint on the aeras that will require welding work. My friend Scott came to the hangar with his torch to do this. It needed little heat to make the paint peel off. After the burning process, I removed the burned paint with a stainless steel brush. Will post pictures of the bare metal in a future post.

Little parenthesis: once this was done, I had a little spare time before the appointment so I decided to make the dye penetrant inspection on my header tank. It turned out a pinhole seemed to be the problem (red dot in the middle of the picture):

End of parenthesis.

Next step was the big one: secure the fuselage on a pick up truck and bring it to the welding shop. I am no pick-up truck expert, but I was expecting something a little bigger. I know it looks kinda crazy but we found a way to safely strap it on the truck:

Drove all the way down from CSE4 to CYUL and managed to mount it back on the super rack, intact in the shop. Phew! Thanks much to my welder, Mark and my friends Marc and Scott who helped me that day. And yes, I am considering a larger vehicle to bring it back in a few weeks!

I'm currently waiting for the 4130 tubing to arrive from Spruce. Plan is to make a little maintenance on my brake system in the meantime!