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.

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 - Normally the interior, headliner and panel, and obviously the control
cables & wiring are installed before the recover anyway, even if it is a
complete restoration. I would have to caution you, though, to not cut
corners too much just to save some time & money *this* time around. The time
to realy go over and make things 100% right is when you already have the
cover off anyway. You're 80% there as it is, why not go ahead and do it once
and make it last another 15 to 20 years... I'd hate to have to take a cover
off down the road that doesn't need to come off to fix something I could
have fixed the first time around.

Just my 2 cents

Doug B

www.aircrafthomebuilder.com