Observations:  The rebuild was good amount of work and as per first impression, most of it confined to the fueslage as the wing repairs took minimal time and effort.  The only issue encountered was the alignment of the prepainted trim on the cowl and windscreen, due to replacing those parts with parts for the Taylorcraft 20cc.  The solution was to live with a slight kink as can be seen in the trim striping as the cowl turns it down slightly.  The trim on the bottom of the windscreen had to be overlayed to realign but that was easy.

Perhaps the most rewarding part of the effort was how easy the side windows were to make after have fretted over what was to be done with them.  Also, the use of the lumberyard 3/16 plywood to rebuild worked well.

The most significant observation regards the CG and a growing opinion that the CG could have been too far aft and possibly the cause of the crash.  My reasons are that the heavy pilot seat was mostly aft of CG (it has been omitted) but much more of an issue were the servo tray and flight battery were in the aft cabin well behind the seat and they weighed very nearly a pound and in the rebuild were moved a minimum of 6.25 inches forward to obtain proper CG.  I just do not see that the rebuild changed much about the structure weight.  I'm tempted to conclude that the PO (previous owner) wrongly balanced the plane by marking balance points on the fuselage and taking the measurement from the forward bulkhead where the wing dowels seat as is very typical of most wings.  One reason for this conclusion is that I almost did it.  The wing however has a 2.5" leading edge offset forward of that bulkhead, which would cause a balance error of that amount.  Other observations are that the plane had been previously crashed and that it had been flown very little as the engine and muffler were almost spotless.  It's possible that it had not been flown after its first repairs.

Conclusion:  The rebuild has been rewarding both from a standpoint of enjoying the effort and financially.  A good deal was gotten on this plane as it was bought for $250 including engine, receiver and servos.  A new Slim Line Pitts muffler is $99 + freight alone.  The newly released version Taylorcraft is $549 for plane only.   The rebuild cost less than $100 and less than $75 if one considers that only a small strip was used from a $26 roll of checkered covering leaving the rest for another repair or another project.

Final Report after flight testing.

Well.... the flight test was interesting.  The engine had been tuned following rebuilding the carb and seemed dialed in.  It started fine, a range check revealed no range or receiver RF issues and the motor spooled up without any hesitations and seemed to be running fine as it had when dialing it in a week or so before (it was a long wait for a decent fly day).  Take off was not much of an issue.  The nose wanted to rotate over a little and just a little back stick settled it for a full run up and a slight bit more back stick had her flying.  She went right just a tad but otherwise climbed smoothly.  Two clicks of up and a click of left had her about trimmed out. 

After gaining altitude, power back to about half stick and checked for trim at mid throttle... seemed good.  Chopped the throttle (very high) and let her glide and she seemed to enjoy a predictable smooth glide.  Powered her back up and looped her and that was smooth and showed adequate power for a good size loop.  Pulled a real tight full elevator loop and she showed some tip stall character.... she'd have to be respected.  Up high at half throttle, she was put in a 45 deg down slope to test CG and she revealed only a hint of upturn indicating the CG was probably exactly where it should be.

She was flying well perhaps five minutes into the flight and very high down at one end of the field, the engine quit.  Fish tailing her back and forth didn't kill enough altitude and it wasn't long before she was in trouble with too much height and a runway that went over the hill and out of sight.  She passed me 150 feet in the air.  I should have dived her and made a very hot wheel landing.  Now, I had a decision to make with neither option good.  If I kept her straight, I'd be landing her over the hill and blind and on a fairly sharp downhill grade.  If she caught a wing tip she'd cartwheel or almost certainly without knowing when to pull the stick back, go hard over on her nose and summersault down the grade.    If I tried to turn back on the runway, she'd likely stall. 

I put the nose down and initiated a fairly hard turn to bring her around and she tip stalled and went in on her nose from about forty feet.  She of course broke in half where all those windows are.

I didn't have any real good choices but the best would have been to dive her hard and do a high speed wheel landing.  Probably the second choice should have been to land her blind and keep the wings level until she was out of sight and then just hope for the best and let her settle by herself.  I admittedly chose the poorest option but it is the one that I get away with on most of the models I fly.... this one however will not tolerate such behavior.

The Damage:  She doesn't look as bad as the previous crash where everything was destroyed from the aft cabin bulkhead forward.  There is very little damage forward of the forward cabin bulkhead and no damage whatsoever to the middle of the cabin and rearward.  While she broke completely in half, she did so completely in those two inches from the forward cabin bulkhead and into the windows.  The firewall, forward belly plan, windshield deck and landing gear blocking are all intact.  The only damage on the wing is to the two mounting dowels and one set of servo gears.  The servo tray is not damaged, nor are the wing struts.

Can it be rebuilt?  Of course.  How easy?  I don't know yet.  She might can be pieced back together rather than a major rebuild.  I don't know how well the luan plywood can be fit back into place.  She is a very pretty airplane and the guys at the field gave her a lot of chatter about how good she looked after the rebuild.  As can be seen in the above rebuild thread, it was a major effort but would be some easier to do again.  I've the pattern for sides for example and now know how to make the side windows with ease and have the molds for those.  The greater question, is she a plane I want taking up space in my garage or is she too tempermental for my laid back flying desires and skills?  My guess is that I'll give her one more strike but I'm not sure that I'll rebuild her now or lay her aside for a bit.

Why did the engine quit?  I've no clue.  I'd tuned it more than a week prior to the test and did so after rebuilding the carb.  A bench run had shown that the carb had a problem because the high speed needle was run in fully and wasn't leaning it out.  After the carb kit, it was run again and dialed in and the top end needle was effective and normal.  It was pulled back two hundred rpm from top and had no spooling or idle problems.  At the field, it started easily, spooled without hesitation and run full power without any sag.  It ran flawlessly until she quit while cruising at about half power.  Did it heat up?  I'd be surprised if overheating was the cause of why it quit.  The cowl was baffled and there was plenty of exit.  The most probable explanation was the temperature and humidity difference between the day it was tuned and the cooler very damp day.  I doubt the temperature difference was that big of an issue but combined with the humidity change, the difference could have caused the flame out.    

May, 2010

The cowl came recently so there is more impetus to finish the TCraft again.  I test ran the engine a couple of days ago and believe the cause of the dead stick and crash became evident.  While the motor started easily and seem to run fine, after about five minutes of run time it sagged power and quit, obviously overheated from starving for fuel.  After pulling and inspecting the carb it was noted that the pump diaphragm used in the rebuild was acetate and even though it had such little run time was deformed.  A bit of checking got some feed back that the acetate pumps are given to poor pumping capacity so another repair kit was obtained.  It had the option of a newer teflon pump, with much greater pumping capacity claimed.  No sign of over heating was noted with it.  In fact the crank case was comfortable to the hand after a ten minute run... a very different story than the day before when it got hot.

Now knowing the cause of the dead stick, I feel better about getting the plane finished and flying.

The Taylorcraft is flying again    July. 2010

Repairs were finished and the plane has flown and is enjoying the flight ready hanger.