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So, in the interest of keeping the community informed with issue we find in our old, high time Eagle, the latest is failing glue.
The early kits came with Wellwood plastic resin in the glue kit. Use of plastic resin is now frowned upon and is called out in the AC43-13b to not use. This started when we found a broken nose rib from R7. We've now found a bunch of missing and walking nails, witness marks from other nose ribs moving on the metal leading edge and second rib broken across the top of the spar. Most ribs move where they should be glued to the spar.
So, if you have an early kit, take a good close look at the glue joints at your next CI.
This Eagle was built in 1981, has about 3600 hours and wings last recovered in 2006.
This plane was built by a group of people in a distributed environment. So far, it looks like most of the ribs used T-88 for assembly, but plastic resin to glue them to the spars. We're hoping to have enough working room between the rib and spar to scrape off the bad glue and apply T-88 before re-nailing them.
Inspection of the lower wings have not revealed the same issues so far but we are going to open them up anyway and inspect closely.
The early kits came with Wellwood plastic resin in the glue kit. Use of plastic resin is now frowned upon and is called out in the AC43-13b to not use. This started when we found a broken nose rib from R7. We've now found a bunch of missing and walking nails, witness marks from other nose ribs moving on the metal leading edge and second rib broken across the top of the spar. Most ribs move where they should be glued to the spar.
So, if you have an early kit, take a good close look at the glue joints at your next CI.
This Eagle was built in 1981, has about 3600 hours and wings last recovered in 2006.
This plane was built by a group of people in a distributed environment. So far, it looks like most of the ribs used T-88 for assembly, but plastic resin to glue them to the spars. We're hoping to have enough working room between the rib and spar to scrape off the bad glue and apply T-88 before re-nailing them.
Inspection of the lower wings have not revealed the same issues so far but we are going to open them up anyway and inspect closely.
