Steve Pierce
BENEFACTOR
Graham, TX
Super Cub 91246 is a 1982 model PA18-150 with a little over 1500 hours of total time. It is interesting because it left Piper and went straight to EDO and was fitted with floats. Over the years it spent about 160 hours on floats in Minnesota before being sold and relocated to New Mexico. My daughter Tabitha and I became associated with the airplane after it was involved in a landing incident in New Mexico. She recovered it out of the mountains after 4 hours of two track roads west of Truth or Consequences. She and my father-in-law disassembled it and transported it back here where I helped the owner buy a flying Super Cub and I bought the wreck. Tabitha and I started disassembling and repairs but after a short time I realized with the shop and my work load I was not going to be able to devote the after hours time needed to get it back into the air in a timely manner. Our initial plan was to rebuild the airplane on speculation and then to sell it. Well I know myself well enough to know that I would not be able to let go of it once completed and the never ending questions of what modifications, panel layout, colors etc. kept popping up.
One Sunday morning I got an email from Nightflyer with a lot of pictures of a Super Cub he was looking to buy. After scanning the high resolution pictures I found a lot of discrepancies for what the owner wanted for the airplane. Having been involved in several annual inspections on freshly restored Super Cubs that had a lot of money thrown at them but the methods and techniques were some what lacking I have gotten very pessimistic in regards to some of these fresh rebuilds. I emailed Nightflyer back a lot of highlighted and marked up pictures of issues I saw. He replied back with a request to help him find a nice airplane. As I sat on the couch drinking coffee I thought to myself, I could sell him 91246 and we could build it like he wants it if he is willing to wait while it is built. After discussing these thoughts with Cathy I emailed him my proposal and we sat up a day for him to look the project over. Needless to say he liked the idea of building a Super Cub the way he wanted it and the deal was struck. My main goal with this thread is to document the rebuild of 91246 but another is to try and pass on some of the things I have learned over the last several years on how Piper did certain things and why. I have had the opportunity to disassemble and restore several late model, pretty original Super Cubs and in doing so I have found things that Piper did that have been left out in the subsequent rebuilds. Now not to say that I am a purist and want to rebuild them like they left the factory but that Piper did know what they were doing and there were reasons they did things the way they did. Also something that I believe strongly is that every time a modification is made it usually effects 2,3 or 4 other things. So, now I will try and document the restoration of Super Cub 91246.
One Sunday morning I got an email from Nightflyer with a lot of pictures of a Super Cub he was looking to buy. After scanning the high resolution pictures I found a lot of discrepancies for what the owner wanted for the airplane. Having been involved in several annual inspections on freshly restored Super Cubs that had a lot of money thrown at them but the methods and techniques were some what lacking I have gotten very pessimistic in regards to some of these fresh rebuilds. I emailed Nightflyer back a lot of highlighted and marked up pictures of issues I saw. He replied back with a request to help him find a nice airplane. As I sat on the couch drinking coffee I thought to myself, I could sell him 91246 and we could build it like he wants it if he is willing to wait while it is built. After discussing these thoughts with Cathy I emailed him my proposal and we sat up a day for him to look the project over. Needless to say he liked the idea of building a Super Cub the way he wanted it and the deal was struck. My main goal with this thread is to document the rebuild of 91246 but another is to try and pass on some of the things I have learned over the last several years on how Piper did certain things and why. I have had the opportunity to disassemble and restore several late model, pretty original Super Cubs and in doing so I have found things that Piper did that have been left out in the subsequent rebuilds. Now not to say that I am a purist and want to rebuild them like they left the factory but that Piper did know what they were doing and there were reasons they did things the way they did. Also something that I believe strongly is that every time a modification is made it usually effects 2,3 or 4 other things. So, now I will try and document the restoration of Super Cub 91246.