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New fuselage or no?

B

bgriffel

Registered User
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Finding inner tube rust at a lot of the welded clusters, no real indication from the outside except for on that I already spliced the longeron at.

This is the lower right hand side where the original dogleg is at, I was able to get a nail in the tube that was in the inside of the weld area.

At what point do you give up repairs and move to a new fuse?

If anyone in SoCal feels like looking at it Ill have a cold beer for you... ;)
 

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New, but that depends on how much welding/labor you need. 13K should get a new fuse give or take. Maybe look for a good used one. Replacing the fuselage requires moving the data tag and all that may involve.
 
Rust inside the tubing is scary. You don't know how thin, nor where the weak points are. You could go over the whole fuse with a center punch but still not know! Expensive to buy a new (nearly new?) one but your resale value will reflect that, so it's kinda an investment. :) It's your A$$ tho. :)
 
If you sandblast the entire fuselage it will help in finding all the bad tubing. The advantage of a new fuselage is you don't have to worry about what you missed or finding a straight jig to put it in. Airframes builds a great fuselage and they fly great. buy the time you do a proper rebuild and jig of the fuselage it might be cheaper to just get a new one.
DENNY
 
ditto with everything said go new and there is always someone willing to take on the project of your old fuselage so its worth a few bucks.

DW
 
first step is ALWAYS to send it to be sand blasted BEFORE doing mods, and see what comes back..... cause you are real sad when you do a bunch of mods and repairs, THEN send it to sand blaster and find out half the tubes had internal rust and they blast through....

NEVER go beat a tube with a punch, it absolutely useless and causes damage, unless you happen to hit the one pitted spot.... it's an absolute joke!!

what you show does NOT scare me, if the tube had a opening or screw hole in it for moisture to get in.... plus that area was NEVER protected inside that cluster....

I much prefer to repair old fuselages than go with new.... but then again, I get paid by the hour and the money then goes in my pocket and not the new fuselage builders pocket.....
 
Another consideration is that a new fuselage comes with lots of built in STC's. You will get reversed dog leg, seat belts attached to floor, reinforced birdcage, boxed tail section, float fittings (if desired - good for resale,) extended baggage, removeable crossbar, 2000pd GW increase, and probably some others. If you buy all these to rebuild your current fuselage they will add to the cost, lowering the differential. New fuselage much better for resale.

just my opinion

Bill
 
Step 1. Go get part time job as walmart greeter.

Step 2. Order new fuselage.

Step 3. Enjoy putting parts on your supercub after getting home from making some $$.

Posted Using the Free SuperCub.Org Android App!
 
I think I got over 6K in my fuselage (sandblasting, mods, repairs, and paint) and kick myself for not just getting a new one.
 
Fuselage repairs are expensive, and sometimes just a bandage for a guy who wants to keep going without dropping the whole wad on a new frame.

Send all your used or old or rusted or crumpled, or otherwise not new frames to AKTango.

...or me. :)

I have a couple of them right now. One is basically stock, fresh outta the jig and blasted. A thing of beauty. Yet, some folks would say they are not worth anything. But there are many hours of "freshening" effort invested there :)

Seriously, what's in your wallet? If you have the money for new, then buy new and enjoy new!

I like what Rusk said about the value of mods that are already accomplished on a new frame when it is purchased.
 
Dave Calkins said:
Send all your used or old or rusted or crumpled, or otherwise not new frames to AKTango.

...or me. :)
Click to expand...

No! I have an old one I will need to get sold soon!

I bought an airframes a couple years ago:cry:, sad because it is still in the shop...

It cost me about $15,000 to take it home.

That included the gross wt. upgrade, cross bar, tail box, front/rear shoulder harness attach point, extended baggage, upper baggage, new door/window, new vertical fin, POWDER COAT, float fittings, L-21 glass channels, and baggage tiedown net.

Yes, it sounds like a bunch of cash, but I expected I would have both lower longerons taken off and then a new tail anyway...

seemed better to start new.
 
One could buy a heck of a lot of tubing for that kind of money.

Going to Walmart now for a job application.

Ryan
 
There are those of us who fix things and those of us who buy new things. Part of this is working out which one you are. Similarly the few thousand saved by repairing an old fuse as opposed to buying a new one is a value judgement only you can make. For many of us not over-captialising in the aeroplane makes it easier for us to keep it!

Andrew.
 
Seems counterproductive to start from square one (stripped fuselage without any parts on it) and not go new if there is any ? that the old fuselage may be compromised. New fuselage equates to a new airplane in my book.
 
they all go CRUNCH the same when you do something dumb, no matter how much money you spend on them... and it seems the more you spend the sooner you go crunch a plane....
 
I would start blasting and see what you find. I have blasted a rebuilt a lot of fuselages and found internal corrosion in only a few of them and it was all because of an uncompleted weld or a hole someone drilled in a tube. Piper frames do not have vent holes drilled between tubes like an Air Tractor. That means if you have internal corrosion it should be limited to a few tubes unless the frame has been submerged and some point in it's life. Univair is another option for either a new fuselage or different length repair sections.
 
If your doing the work and fixing it you'll definitely save a lot of money and learn a lot about welding and fabrication. Only attempt it yourself if you are passionate and confident.

There simply is no cheap way out, either you spend lots of time fixing it or $$ paying sombody else.

I wonder what Chris Nesin thinks....he just rebuilt most of his fuselage.

Tim
 
We welded extensively on our SC frame - 23 tubes (added, moved or repaired), new window frames, new stringer supports & all new "brick-a-brac. But we had a couple of things going for us.
1. When we opened up the frame, we never found rust inside, bright bare steel. So we didn't have to worry about internal rust even in the lower longerons.
2. Bob Eckstein was the IA, a friend and an AWS award winning tig welder. We worked together. My job was to cut & fit the tubes or channels. Just a few at a time. Bob would come to the hangar multiple times over a period of a yr and weld an hour or two & we would talk over next steps. I bought a Lincoln 175 Tig welder primarily for this purpose. Total cost about $2500 not counting the welding machine. I believe it is as good as new but a new frame undoubtedly would help resale. Just my experience. But I would not have repaired the frame if we had found rust inside.
 
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We did a lot of weld repair on our cub when we recovered it 3 years ago now.... Thought about going new, but... It's an ag frame, and no one at the time was building new ag frames and we wanted to keep it an ag frame.... Pretty sure there still isn't any ag frames available new even now... I have a couple of other frames that need repair that we're replaced by airframes inc frames... Will probably use one for an experimental some day....

Brian
 
As Andrew said, do you like fixing things or buying new? How much is your time worth? The frame will come out fine either way.

I put 46 feet of new tubing in my frame but that is only about 1/3rd of the frame. Half of that was just to replace tubing that had outer sleeve repairs instead of inner sleeve or replace the whole tube instead of splicing in a repair.. It took me 5 straight weeks but the cost was 1/3rd of the delivered frame price.

Chris
 
I'm one who likes to fix things and rebuild but I think I'm with Darrel on this one in regards to not repairing because of the rust... I don't doubt the fuselage is strong enough at the moment for a few more years of service but.... Why patch something up that is going to be bad enough one day soon to scrap... I'm beginning to think one of those years it was on floats it may have took a partial swim....
 
I have seen at least one guy drop 100 hours x $ shop rate before deciding his frame was too far gone. Then bought a new one. So make a decision early. Also, having bought 3 new fuselages, my justification is that a rebuild with a new fuselage adds at least $10k to the resale value, if not more, so the old frame has to be pretty good to do a restoration? But I do understand that some guys have got the time and patience to do a good job repairing. So figure out where you are on this spectrum. Don
 
Another thing to consider is if you don't have good jig to ensure your fuselage is straight. You may have a nice repaired airframe that flys bad. Not to say every time you work on an airframe it has to be put in a jig. Lots of cubs flying with new tail sections and gear fittings replaced that never saw a jig. But if you are doing a total rebuild now is the time for the jig.
DENNY
 
Update to this I did order a new Airframes Fuselage, happy I did but it sure is going to leave a nasty ramen noodle taste in my mouth....

I'll start a new thread with some pics of the build when I get a chance, thanks to Dave Prizio out of Chino for a wing rotator things should be progressing soon....
 
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