What happened?

[bluerooster]

I bought my Taylorcraft project, and it's been sitting idle since 2013. At least according to the logs, last entry was annual inspection in 2013. Now it sits with badly damaged left wing, lower empennage, and a left landing gear that doesn't match. I suspect that the left bungies gave way, on landing. At the time of last annual, the right side was repaired, and new bungies installed. Why they didn't replace all four is beyond me. (I would guess that the owner at that time wished they had)

Anyway. I had my local A&P/IA come by to have a looksee, and give his opinion on which way I should proceed. After looking at what I have, and concurring on my use of fuselage #2 to build a jig to repair fuselage #1, and also using #2 to replace #1, to get in the air quicker. he asked what happened to it. I told him that I had no clue, but based upon the evidence on hand, I would say left landing gear bungie broke. That was a week ago. Today, I decided to look up NTSB reports for the time frame between last annual, and following year. What I found is that the left landing gear folded like a bad hand, causing an off runway excursion, and left wing sustained broken spars, wing struts damaged, along with lower empennage being damaged. So, my suspicions were correct. (not that it really matters, I still have to fix it) But just a bit of confirmation as to the history of the airplane.

[Hank Jarrett]

Using a good fuselage to measure from and repair a damaged one works REALLY WELL! Did that on my 45 but got a bit carried away with getting everything perfectly straight and even. When I told Forrest what I had done he said I probably had the straightest fuselage ever on a Taylorcraft! You need to get the CRITICAL parts in the right places, not EVERY TUBE. That means get the tail surfaces square and at the correct angles to the wing root, gear attach points and firewall. Everything else is pretty much plus or minus 1/4" and parts are fitted up and shimmed to fit (at least on my planes, there is a lot of wood on the early planes to take up misalignment's).
If you want to take a look at my WAY TOO ANAL straight fuselage in SE Virginia, she is still un-covered and good for measurements. GA isn't that far from SE Virginia. There is also a fantastic welder here who did my work. He is a real artist.

Hank

[kevinbrooker]

I've acquired 2 Stinson 10a complete airplanes. One has a damaged fuselage, the other is good to go. I'd like to see, hear, know how you measured or jigged the good fuse to repair the broken one. The idea is to restore one and then repair the other. Multi year project.

[Hank Jarrett]

We set the busted up fuselage right next to the "good" one and went from tube to tube cutting out damage and welding in new tubes. The example "good" one was NOT perfectly straight so we started at the tail post and worked forward one frame at a time squaring up each tube square. The front kind of twists a bit with each weld as the firewall slowly dials in. Just keep going back to the fin post and rechecking a you go, pulling everything square and triangulating each joint. When we got to the wing attach the cabin had been crushed so we made a set of braces from old angle iron to hold the hard points in place while we welded in tubes. That set the wing position and angle of incidence. As we went the fuselage just seemed to get straighter and straighter. By the time we got t the firewall I don't remember having to cut and weld anything. Just make sure the tail surfaces are square and the stab is level, then work forward. What is critical is the landing gear and strut attach, the wing attach points and the firewall. The rest of the fuselage is really just along for the ride. We worked WAY too hard getting everything square and true. The key attach points are what is important for a "straight" airplane.

Hank

[kevinbrooker]

Thanks for the information. I'll get back to Tcrafts now.....