Recovering fuselage

The belly fabric on my Decathlon is in terrible shape. It is oil soaked to
the point where the paint and tapes are flaking off. Something has to be
done. Doubtful we can reskin just the belly, so we are considering a
recover of the entire fuselage.

Is it possible to recover a fuselage without disassembling the aircraft
completely? We just had a brand new engine and prop installed, and would
like to avoid yanking the engine off. Would like to leave the interior and
panel alone, too, mainly to save money and time.

Obviously we can't do a complete restoration, to include sandblasting the
frame and repriming, but could we inspect and clean/prime only the areas
where we spot problems?

Thanks

"Ed Haywood" wrote in message om...
The belly fabric on my Decathlon is in terrible shape. It is oil soaked to
the point where the paint and tapes are flaking off. Something has to be
done. Doubtful we can reskin just the belly, so we are considering a
recover of the entire fuselage.

Is it possible to recover a fuselage without disassembling the aircraft
completely? We just had a brand new engine and prop installed, and would
like to avoid yanking the engine off. Would like to leave the interior and
panel alone, too, mainly to save money and time.


Ed: You are going to have to strip out some of the interior to do the
fabric work no matter what. If I remember correctly, you will also
have to pull the gear to minimize the number of seams in the forward
fuselage area. Also, isn't there a metal boot cowling? It will have to
come off too...

Just for a data point we can strip a Stinson L-5, which is about the
same size and complexity down to the bare tubing in a little over 15
manhours. It then takes about 20 hours to do the basic covering and
stich the fin. Getting through the paint takes at least another 30
manhours, depending on the scheme complexity. Add another 20-30 hours
to put it all back together and check everthing out.

Cleaning and preping the fuselage for fabric is going to take you
quite a while if you don't strip it completely because the old glue
and fabric are going to have to be buffed off where they don't simply
pull off. then you will have to hand wipe each tube numerous times
to be sure that all traces of oil are off them or the glue will not
stick.

Clearly, you have to make a decision as to how much grunt labor you
want to put in doing this vs just taking it completely down and having
the tubing blasted and painted. BTW...a good blast and paint job will
take less than 10 manhours to do and about 2-3 calendar days.

We've done them both ways for customers in our shop and I can tell you
that the minimalist way usually ends up biting the customer in the
butt within a year or two when something else shows up and requires
opening the fuselage back up to take care of it.

Food for though.....

Craig C.

Thanks Craig. We had a confab today with my partner, the shop IA, the shop
fabric guy, and another IA with many years of experience on Decathlons. The
collective decision is to put off the recover by trying to clean the belly
fabric and repaint it. Failing that, we are going to re-skin the belly
only.

I'm still of the opinion that recovering the fuselage would be better, but
that will have to wait a few years.


Food for though.....

Craig C.

Here is a more radical solution for you. I have a Maule and just recovered.
However, there are mod's available to metalize the belly. I took a quick
look at the Champion website and saw that a metal belly is an option for
$1100 on a new one. Therefore there might be an STC that could apply. You
could eliminate the fabric all together.

Now, having said that. When I get into my Maule which is a 1980 and took the
fabric off I was glad I did. numerous things that I was glad to fix.
corrosion on some tubing and window frames. The wooden stringers we about
rotted away in spots or really warped --- replaced them with metal stringers
while I was at it.

If you have an envelope I think you will need to cut the bottom away leaving
enough to glue the remaining material off to the bottom longerons. If you
don't have good fabric for this you are in trouble.

If you can get away with a few more years doing something with the bottom --
fabric or metal it MIGHT save you some cash now. But when you finally
recover -- do the whole airplane and take it down to the metal all around.
You'll be happy you did when you see the typical problems you probably
already have lurking below the surface.

Tom

"Ed" wrote in message
. com...

Thanks Craig. We had a confab today with my partner, the shop IA, the
shop
fabric guy, and another IA with many years of experience on Decathlons.
The
collective decision is to put off the recover by trying to clean the belly
fabric and repaint it. Failing that, we are going to re-skin the belly
only.

I'm still of the opinion that recovering the fuselage would be better, but
that will have to wait a few years.


Food for though.....

Craig C.