I am beginning (have already started) rebuilding a cub project with the help of my Dad that I bought in November . We have gotten so much good information off of this site by reading the other build/maintenance threads, that it seemed to be least I could do to add another so that there would be some more stellar advice for others to see.
I am a 19 year old UAF engineering student and I consider myself blessed beyond anything I could imagine to have bought a plane at all, let alone a cub, but long story short, I will be paying for the whole thing (somehow) and have my hands on at least 99.5% of the work with the oversight of my Dad who is an A&P and built himself a cub when I was just starting school. He may be reading this, so I hope I can honor the positive influence he has had on me.
Between his experience and all of yours we have gotten off to a great start!
After bringing home the plane in November we decided that the fuselage which had been modified (and powdercoated) by the previous owner needed to go on a massive diet, some of the ideas were welded on with tubes with .049 thicknesses and beyond. When my semester ended in December we put the fuselage in the garage and started whittling. After some serious work we got all of the kinks worked out (we thought) and after it was all said and done I weighed the box of scraps and it came in at 17 lbs, and the stuff we swept off of the floor probably added some more. The end of Christmas break came so the work stopped.
After a few days my Dad called me with bad news. The gear legs don't fit. We had already stared at the wing fittings wondering how they would be and this didn't exactly ease our minds, I had read through a big portion of the thrustline thread and saw what Mark E. and others were saying about cubs with angles of incidence that didn't match on either side and other horror stories so we decided to borrow Atlee’s jig (pays to have connections). I went home for a few days in February (a positive to online classes, I get to work on the plane!) and we discovered that the fuselage was seriously off. After some guessing and a second opinion from our IA we cut out the top deck x brace and removed all of the gear fittings. With some pushing and pulling it now fits and the x brace is back in.
Now we are approaching the present, and over spring break we installed all of the fuselage STCs and mods that I decided on that were not already there:
Atlee Dodge Extended Baggage
Performance Airmotive Baggage Door
Sullivan 3rd Seat
Before installing these we weighed the fuselage at 105 lbs, and afterwards it came in at 115lbs (still lighter than when I bought it!) With all of these completed. It will be blasted and re-powdercoated, and then put back into storage until May when my semester is over.
I'll post some pictures soon.
I am a 19 year old UAF engineering student and I consider myself blessed beyond anything I could imagine to have bought a plane at all, let alone a cub, but long story short, I will be paying for the whole thing (somehow) and have my hands on at least 99.5% of the work with the oversight of my Dad who is an A&P and built himself a cub when I was just starting school. He may be reading this, so I hope I can honor the positive influence he has had on me.
Between his experience and all of yours we have gotten off to a great start!
After bringing home the plane in November we decided that the fuselage which had been modified (and powdercoated) by the previous owner needed to go on a massive diet, some of the ideas were welded on with tubes with .049 thicknesses and beyond. When my semester ended in December we put the fuselage in the garage and started whittling. After some serious work we got all of the kinks worked out (we thought) and after it was all said and done I weighed the box of scraps and it came in at 17 lbs, and the stuff we swept off of the floor probably added some more. The end of Christmas break came so the work stopped.
After a few days my Dad called me with bad news. The gear legs don't fit. We had already stared at the wing fittings wondering how they would be and this didn't exactly ease our minds, I had read through a big portion of the thrustline thread and saw what Mark E. and others were saying about cubs with angles of incidence that didn't match on either side and other horror stories so we decided to borrow Atlee’s jig (pays to have connections). I went home for a few days in February (a positive to online classes, I get to work on the plane!) and we discovered that the fuselage was seriously off. After some guessing and a second opinion from our IA we cut out the top deck x brace and removed all of the gear fittings. With some pushing and pulling it now fits and the x brace is back in.
Now we are approaching the present, and over spring break we installed all of the fuselage STCs and mods that I decided on that were not already there:
Atlee Dodge Extended Baggage
Performance Airmotive Baggage Door
Sullivan 3rd Seat
Before installing these we weighed the fuselage at 105 lbs, and afterwards it came in at 115lbs (still lighter than when I bought it!) With all of these completed. It will be blasted and re-powdercoated, and then put back into storage until May when my semester is over.
I'll post some pictures soon.
