What Have I Gotten Myself Into??? | Thorp T-18 Rebuild - Wing Corrosion
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- #aviation #experimentalaircraft #thorp
Watch me take the first steps to rebuilding the Thorp and uncovering some unfortunate hidden damage. Nothing else to do but to press forward!
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Man, thats a ton of work! We need guys like you resurrecting these great older airplanes though!
I saw that plane at EAA Oshkosh many years ago! T-18 is an awesome plane. It’s worth fixing! T-18C wing or original, it a good plane.
I remember that airplane at Osh in the 80s. Get Thorp's original articles "Building the T-18" from EAA. I have them in soft cover book form. Might be worth it to start over and build the T-18C folding wings or even the S-18 folding wing (but with the narrower fuselage dimension), the S-18 having an airfoil with a bigger LE radius and a gentler stall.
BTW, using the blunt end of the same size drill you are drilling with makes the rivet heads come off easy and cleanly.
Great job! It will all payoff in the end. Love your videos!
I hope so!
Give Alex a call and buy the pieces for a T-18C wing. Go back with new and make this one a wall hanger
I have considered this already. But I still think this wing is worth fixing
It looks like filiform corrosion. Darn varmints, even if the internal structure is alodined and primed with chromate or some other primer, it's hard to prevent that type of corrosion if it becomes a nest for critters. They urinate on it, and it eats through all the protective coatings. Not sure if there is anything that can stop that. Probably the only way to stop that is to store wing panels in completely sealed containers, like made from plastic sheets.
@@tedstriker754 yep filiform is what I concluded after consulting 43.13 for guidance. And yeah, storage around here is crucial. We have field mice constantly looking for a home in the cold months!
@@MotoFlightGuy Way back in the early 70s in Miami we had a Swift that had filiform corrosion on the main spar. We were lucky, as there were several Pan Am sheet metal mechanics that also worked on light planes. They were all A&Ps and some AI's as well. One that we used treated the area with acid, then painted it with something else. He declared it airworthy and signed it off. So there are options.
Lets go!!!!!
If it was easy! Everyone would do it!
There is always a reason others have given up on salvage barn finds.
What a drag! You might just be better off building an entirely new wing. Feels like you've scratched the surface and will find bad shit isn't just on the surface. :(
Hoping I've found all of the bad stuff at this point, although I don't always have the best luck!
I’ll tell yah I’ve seen a lot worse in currently flying aircraft.
true.
Yeah I have too unfortunately. This didn't make sense for me to ignore, especially since I plan on keeping this one for a long time.
I’ll take the project off your hands
Ugh why waste time with this nonsense when you can send the whole thing out to be 3D scanned and remade perfectly with no defects on a printer then easily wrapped in carbon fiber which would be a hundred times stronger and never corrode.