One for the Restorers…

The people that think that it’d be simple to restore this aircraft or that aircraft should come and have a look at this little lot being carried out.
Cheers
Andy

I seem to recall that RareBear’s hours worked out at something like 4000hrs maint to 1 hour in the air… Having worked on it for 2 seasons that would seem to be about right… but thats not exactly yer *average bear booboo..” 😀

I spent yesterday in the hangar of a certain Sea Fury pilot and owner.
Out of the three aircraft available two are out of action at present.
The T-6 is having it’s attach angles AD completed and the Sea Fury is being prepared for Reno in September.
The people that think that it’d be simple to restore this aircraft or that aircraft should come and have a look at this little lot being carried out.

Cheers
Andy

I’d certainly buy it. Melvyn seems to have been doing the restoration as a labour of love.
Melvyn, did you buy the Rearwin because you like them or just because it was available at the time at a price you were willing to pay?

The aeroplane was a good deal had it been in the condition that both the seller and I thought (I don’t hold him responsible).

I thought a Warner would be much easier to find and that took six years. I am glad we didn’t fly it before restoration as even though I was fed up with it at times (how many good days when I could have been flying did I spend in a shed with the rats) but it is good now. I have just completed the paperwork submission to put hydraulic brakes on it and hopefully the PFa will say yes soon. The conversion should not take long as all the parts are off the shelf except for two spacers for the axle.

Hopefully I shuold be flying again an a few weeks.

Melv

This one isn’t a restoration that we did, but the boss managed to acquire a surviving panel from an aeroplane which is no longer with us, and whose identity I will not divulge.

The cause of the aeroplane’s actual loss was not due to any structural issue, but the condition of the panel that we saw suggested that the aeroplane really wasn’t in a very good condition at all. The boss intended to keep this piece as a prime example of how NOT to restore an aeroplane…

Opening up a few inspection panels on a B-25 wing, we once found the remains of a remote compass (can’t remember what it’s called now but you know the wire-wound ring, split in three that is used on slaved heading gyro’s?). Now these remains were not properly attached to the wing structure, but were happily bouncing about inside the wing tip, and had been like that for a while probably!

Melvyn, the more I see/read about the Rearwin, the more impressive the story gets. Going back to the ‘make your own Rearwin’ cover that I once constructed, have you thought about a book like that? I’m sure that the story would be of interest to some, and the tips valuable to anyone connected to or interested in restoration.

I’d certainly buy it. Melvyn seems to have been doing the restoration as a labour of love.
Melvyn, did you buy the Rearwin because you like them or just because it was available at the time at a price you were willing to pay?

Melv.
Fascinating story. Thanks for sharing it, and you deserve all the fun you can get out of the Rearwin. It owes you.

well Melv, first of all thanks a lot for your reply: that sounded like a trip to hell!! 😮 yr patience alone deserves an award! 😀 Have many questions to ask, I wonder if I could do it at Legends or later at the pub 🙂

Cheers

Alex

Some years ago I was involved in reassembling an ‘airworthy’ Waco YKS bought from the states. When putting on one of the interplane struts, we were a bit surprised that it was the devil to fit, and the fittings in on the wing had about a 1/4 inch clearance on either side of the strut. We decided to investigate, and made a small hole in the fabric, only to find out that the front spar was broken in two, but had been bolted together with a aluminum plate about one and a half feet long. No mention was anywhere in the logs about any accident or the ‘repair’. When taking the rest of the fabric from the wing we found numerous broken ribs that had been ‘repaired’ in a non-airworthy manner. Ribs in all the other wings had had similar treatment.

Melvin has shown the ‘real’ side of restoration, warts and all. Consider that this is a relatively straightforward aircraft (not decrying Melv’s work in any way), and you start to get a feel for what we come up against on the bigger warbirds.

Anyway, to get back to the question:

P51 – Trim cables bound up with masking tape, and fouling the drum in the tailplane. Same aircraft, a fire system that completely fouled the elevator cables.

Spitfires various – Exfoliation corrosion in aileron control brackets repaired with filler – wondered why they were twice as thick as the others we had fitted!

Bruce

Melvyn, the more I see/read about the Rearwin, the more impressive the story gets. Going back to the ‘make your own Rearwin’ cover that I once constructed, have you thought about a book like that? I’m sure that the story would be of interest to some, and the tips valuable to anyone connected to or interested in restoration.

Having spent more money than I care to admit to and having wasted a fair chink of that I have no intention of wasting any on an aviation book as it would probably sell about 500 copies!

Nope, it is getting brakes fixed and then flying some more. I have just under 36 hours on it now and I am missing it like mad in this weather.

Thanks for the comments though.

Melv

Opening up a few inspection panels on a B-25 wing, we once found the remains of a remote compass (can’t remember what it’s called now but you know the wire-wound ring, split in three that is used on slaved heading gyro’s?). Now these remains were not properly attached to the wing structure, but were happily bouncing about inside the wing tip, and had been like that for a while probably!

Melvyn, the more I see/read about the Rearwin, the more impressive the story gets. Going back to the ‘make your own Rearwin’ cover that I once constructed, have you thought about a book like that? I’m sure that the story would be of interest to some, and the tips valuable to anyone connected to or interested in restoration.

There will be an article soon (other listings magazines are available) and there will probably be a flight test too. I have to get the brakes sorted, which is now well on the way to being done, and get the spats back from France.

If I had known what I was taking on I probably wouldn’t have done it. I bought it as “airworthy without and engine” and all the paperwork and external condition suggested that was fine. The problem was the insides! After being in storage for a good few years, getting gamaged and wet and finally being put up for sale (without my knoweldge) I moved it to where it was rebuilt. The engine I bought was a basket case and no where near as good as I thought (complete and ready for reassembly yet needed two new cylinders, two new pistons {like rocking horse droppings!} a new crank, complete modification to take new valves and guides, chroming the cylinders and about another £3,000 of spare parts PLUS exhaust, PLUS wiring harness plus rebuilding the mags that had already been done in the US, rebuilding the starter and rebuilding the carb (again) then it was time to find out my Warner Scarab didn’t fit on the mount that a Warner Scarab had come off!

Fuselage was not bad. Untidy but sound. All new pulleys (the old ones were gummed up) new cables, £400 worth of new bearings, new stringers, new instrument panel, new fuel pipes and designed-in glass roof.

Wings were terrible, all wing ribs repaired in at least three places and in some cases more. Spars OK except for one small repair. Tip bows repairs. Tanks removed – this requires removing the plywood covers that are nailed and glued to the spars and then removing the tanks and mounting hardware, cleaning and repainting the metal compression struts and regluing the wooden ones. Redesigned and replaced aileron bay (not enough of the original remained in good condition so it was start from nothing) new trailined edges, new leading edges, ailerons were good, new bearings on all parts, new root rib. All parts cleaned and painted. New wingtip lights ($200).

Tailplane needed a new spar as the old one had no drain holes and so had been wet, elevator had to be straightened, new bearings, trim arrangement rebuilt, rudder repaired and spar straightened to remove bow caused by bad fabric work, new tialplane wires, tailwheel overhaul (including cutting the old oil out with a knife) finding parts for the tailwheel steering that had been removed.

Undercarriage removed, oleos rebuilt as they were seized solid and had been for years, new fairings made, new tailplane fairings made, new metal panels for fuselage (at least six attempts to paint them due to the rubbish that Randolph sent me for the job and the messing around I got from a paint company in Andover) New panel made from ali (three attempts) seats recovered – £549 from a place in Andover and I had to do one again as well as finding that even though I had paid for leather, part of the seat is vinyl – didn’t find out until too late so could do nothing but I would never use them again!, new radio, all new wiring, rebuilt brakes (waste of money) new interior, new seat belts (only lap straps originally fitted), engine mount modification, engine installation and completion (Vintec were brilliant and sent me the bottom end of the engine and pots all done. Miles McCallum and I assembled it and fitted mags etc.) new cowlings, more paint but now from a place in Aldermaston who are brilliant, new wing to fuselage straps, new roof fitted, new windows made, old screen cleaned and re-used,

100 deg heat in high summer, leaks and freezing conditions in the winter. Four years in a shed that had rats.

New prop and hub. The hub was bought and paid for and then the guy dragged his feet on sending it. I was about to get stroppy when I found that he had been killed the day before in a crash. There was then a break before I found a friend of his to approach his wife. She was brilliant and very apologetic that I had waited so long (over a year) but I had far fewer problems than her! Prop was $2270. Shipped in a cardboard box from Florida!

Easy really, I don’t know why you lot do’t just go and buy that B25 at North Weald, you’d be finished in nine months!

Jeez Melvyn. Had I been faced with that mess I’d never have done it. How did you work out where to start?

my goodness, that must have eaten a lotta time to finish, innit?
U probably posted it before, but u have a sorta history of your restoration and/or a website? I’m always fascinated by such projects with a lot of work behind 🙂
Will we be able to talk about it at Legends? 🙂

Alex

so u had a butcher working on her before u bought her uh? 😉

Alex

Several!

so u had a butcher working on her before u bought her uh? 😉

Alex

Good job that was sorted begore you ever tried to fly it Melv. My bird table is better built than that and that was something my dad knocked together in about 30 minutes.

Rib repair on the Rearwin

This reminds me of my first restoration job as a volunteer with the italian association called GAVS. I took part to the first steps of the project, an original Spad VII who needed a general overhaul for static display. Once we started removing the canvas over the upper wing we found the following:

1) a set of ribs remade with thick plywood!!!
2) balls of newspaper pages from 1962!!!

ah, vintage restorers! :rolleyes:

Alex