Removing wood spars

Hi guys,

I have a set of J-5 wings and I want to remove the spars from one wing to revarnish or possibly replace. I have taken all the nails and bolts out of the rear spar and lossened the drag wires and compresion struts. All is loose, but is there any trick to getting the spars to slide out of the ribs. I put new spars in my t-craft, but it has a three piece ribs, pretty easy to drill the rivets and remove the aft end of the rib. Any tips or suggestions?
I also noticed the compression struts have alum. bolts through the spar; is this normal?

Thanks,
Wade

Harbi said:

Hi guys,

I have a set of J-5 wings and I want to remove the spars from one wing to revarnish or possibly replace. I have taken all the nails and bolts out of the rear spar and lossened the drag wires and compresion struts. All is loose, but is there any trick to getting the spars to slide out of the ribs. I put new spars in my t-craft, but it has a three piece ribs, pretty easy to drill the rivets and remove the aft end of the rib. Any tips or suggestions?
I also noticed the compression struts have alum. bolts through the spar; is this normal?

Thanks,
Wade

Click to expand...

I think you are going to have a very tough time just pulling the spars. The reason I say this is because there is not any clearance between the spar plates and the ribs. Un less you can slide it out perfectly straight while keeping every ribs straight it is going to be tough. Its kinda like a chinese finger trap. When I took mine apart half of the ribs had been repaired on the spars so they would not slide off :evil:

As for the compression struts....yes they are very similar as most metal spar wings. A much different animal than the J-3 wood spar wing. If the bolts in the compression struts are original they will be aluminum.

Tim