My coupe has been fully disassembled except for the covering on the wings. It was maintained by the previous owners and was annulled faithfully since 1956. I say this because there are only a few entries in the logs about maintenance except for the annuals. Here is what I found. I am not an AP. My cower is. spinner back plate cracked. wrong spinner on engine. wrong crankshaft in the engine. it's a 12-F engine with a taper crank. no braces on gascolator. auto muffler clamps on the exhaust system. no 'P' leads on the mags. both wing tanks outlet flanges repaired with pop rivets to replace corroded rivets. both wing tanks sloshed. left rear spar relaced but bolted in and not riveted. rubber bumper on MLG replaced with a spring to limit down travel of the gear. venturi mounted on belly skin with no reinforcing plate. strobe mounted on belly skin with no reinforcing plate. no lockwire on the control cable turnbuckles. aileron belcrank with broken ear for clevis pin. pitot tubing holed in two locations. wooden floorboard broken into three pieces. fuselage tank is home made. Looks like the original aluminum tank but definitely home fabricated. fuel system has overflow to both wing tranks. separate line from fuselage tank to each main tank. trim cable seized in housing. cross brace at frame 'E' replaced with steel rod. trim tab stop set at 20 degrees up instead of zero. rudder main rib modification was not done right. left rudder horn cracked. center section butt rib cracked on left side. These are what I consider items that should have been found by the AP and IA's who worked on the aircraft in it's lifetime. I am new to aviation after having spent 30 years in the Navy flying submarines around the ocean. They behave exactly like an airplane, they bank into turns and fly in three dimensional space. By the way, they are controlled with a control wheel just like a large airliner, push to go down, pull to go up, turn the wheel left to go left and right to go right and they HAVE NO RUDDER PEDALS. I wonder if Fred were involved in the design. If my Coupe were a example of owner maintenance, then I would not vote for such a program, but after all, I must consider that it was annulled for the past umpteen years with not a problem noted other than items like filters, tires and a mag coil being noted. At the last annual it was listed as unairworthy because of fuel system contamination. (the sloshing compound was flaking off). I am repairing all the items above and the hundred other gripes that I found and did not list. A case of NEITHER party doing their job. Rich Blair N99997 4J6 St.Marys, Ga.
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