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What were the wheels made of, Herb? Steel on aluminum is a very bad thing!

A dremel is a very good thing, but I agree with Carl, steel on aluminum is veerrrryyyy bad.

Y'all should have seen me restoring the frame for my '72 Stupid Beetle convertible top. I turned it from a rusting, decaying piece of scrap metal to something so much better.

Too bad I still have to pull the motor out, clean it up a bit, a new coil for the vacuum assisted auto stick, new interior - seat covers, interior panels, new dash, brakes to unseize, a ding on both rear fenders... 2 rust spots the size of dimes on the hood. Other than that, no rust on the frame or body panels (the only rust are on the hood from rock dings) paint is in fairly good shape, it holds wax well.

Too much work for me at the moment, but who knows, I might just finish it up.

Germany's revenge!

Carl:

We used about 65 stainless steel "soft" wire wheels. You can get them in two flavors, but the soft works the best!

Herb

Thanks, Herb! I'm still not sure that's a good idea. I'll stick to my Roloc discs and Scotchbrite.

It's more labor intensive, but I don't have to worry about embedding steel molecules in the aluminum and setting up dissimilar metal corrosion later on! I agree that stainless is much much better than normal ferrous metals, if you must use it on aluminum.

This often comes up. Cessna uses model years, thus new models begin in the fall. 1974 model production began in the fall of 1973 for example, just like automobiles. You are best to refer to your airplane using CESSNS'S year model designation.

The FAA on the other hand, uses CALENDAR years for their year listings. Thus you can have F models with both 1965 and 1966 given for their year. We all know that 1965 models were straight tails, except the FAA......... Best to forget what the FAA has to say about years, its meaningless, stick with actual model, such as 150F or 150M and the serial number, you will never go wrong with this.

Charles

Carl:

We used the many Roloc dics and several boxes of the Scotch-brite pads along with the stainless wire wheels. The wheels were used extensively on the lap-joints, and rivits. Additionally, after the plane was bare metal, we used a borax solution and laundry soap with the Scotch-brite pads to removes any particles of oil/metal/junk of any kind. After this, the plane was alodined (sp), and then primered in two part epoxy zinc. There is a very small window between the start and finish of these steps if you read everything on the painting lable, and adhere to it.

I know this much.... it's a lot hader than it looks, very time consuming, and very critical to the finished product.

Thanks, Herb

Well I know this much - Herb"s plane looks great !

Mr. Rose, Job well done.