September 2012
Here are a few of the things I’ve learned during the restoration of my neighbor’s 1939 Piper J-3 Cub. There weren’t any self-locking nuts in 1939; every bolt in the airplane is safetied with a cotter pin. The parts book is a joke. The Cub Club organization is super-helpful, as is Clyde Smith, Jr., aka “The Cub Doctor.”
Finally, unlike the parts situation with my own “modern era” airplane (the sweet-flying 1960 Piper PA-24 Comanche 180), every part we’ve needed has been readily available from either Wag-Aero or Univair.
We’d planned to be ready to fly N21938 south to the West Coast Cub Fly-in held in early July, but we didn’t make it. But we are making progress—and I’ll talk about the two types of aircraft maintenance progress later—and we are having a lot of fun.
A 75-YEAR-OLD ICON
This year celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Piper Cub, and the grand prize in EAA’s 2012 sweepstakes is N31085—a restored Piper J-3C-65 Cub. Cubs are simple machines that have served faithfully in the role of teaching stick and rudder skills to thousands of flyers over the decades. (The “Win the Cub” Sweepstakes is now closed to entries; the drawing will be held at the EAA AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh on Sept. 10, 2012.—Ed.)
More than 14,000 Cubs were built in Lock Haven before production ended in 1946. In 1945, Piper built 6,320 J-3s—that’s 28 a day if the total number is averaged over a five-day work week. In spite of the low power loading (around 17 pounds/hp) and lower wing loading (6.25 pounds per square foot of wing area) when compared to more modern airplanes, flying a little yellow—they’re almost all painted yellow—J-3 Cub is near the top of almost every pilot’s bucket list.
Why? Simply because of the Cub’s iconic status and because few other airplanes have the stuff needed to transport today’s flyers back to the simpler days when slowly climbing aloft on a warm summer evening was magic enough.
Aviation Consumer magazine published a review of the J-3. Owner Mason Cox wrote this about flying the Cub: “Fly it properly, and it tells you, ‘Son, thou didst well.’ Fly it poorly, and it says, ‘Son, thou didst not fly well, but I forgive thee.’” A Cub is a friendly airplane.
ENTERING A NEW WORLD
I’ve held my A&P license for 41 years and made a living twisting wrenches for
25 of those years, yet had never worked
on a J-3.
I owned a 1947 three-place Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser for a few years, though. It had the same long and fat wing as the J-3, but was powered by a fully-cowled Lycoming O-235-C1 engine that put out a whopping 108 hp.
During May of 1983 I flew 55 Mike, my Piper, on a long cross-country flight from Corpus Christi, Texas to Soldotna, Alaska. It took 50 flight hours and the weather was CAVU (severe clear) every inch of the way.
I finally got the chance to leap into the J-3 world when my neighbor Bob Berg called me last February.
BOB’S J-3
In 1987 Berg paid $9,500 for a 1939 Piper J-3 with a freshly overhauled engine. The original 50 hp engine had been replaced with a 65 hp Continental A-65-8.
Berg flew N24918 for nearly 10 years before his mechanic told him he couldn’t sign off another annual. The fabric was not out of strength limits—the Cub had been recovered in Stits synthetic fabric in1977 after being purchased at auction in 1975 due to a mechanic’s lien (which was likely due to unairworthy fabric)—the problem with Berg’s plane was critter infestations.
Berg kept the J-3 in an open hangar on his private strip west of Templeton, Calif. Mice had moved into the wings and built nests. Mud dauber wasps had also nested all through the airframe.
In 2001 Berg disassembled his J-3 and hauled the big pieces off to be recovered. The engine and all the hardware and other little pieces such as fairings were set aside on rolling benches in his workshop.
The airframe, fuselage and control surfaces were recovered by Dan Kellenberger using the Stits process. Kellenberger wrote, “Airframe like new,” in the logbook. According to Berg, his J-3 was the last airframe Kellenberger recovered. He did a good job. The recovered airframe parts were then trucked back to the warehouse at Bob’s company and stored… for 10 years.
In mid-February this year, Berg asked me to help him reassemble his Cub. I jumped at the chance for three reasons:
I enjoyed Berg’s company and wanted
to work with him; I needed a real hands-on airplane project to balance the work-alone world of writing; and because I really like working on simple, mechanic-sized airplanes.
I also believe that it’s my destiny to give a little back to the industry that’s has provided a good living and helped me rub elbows with so many fascinating people in some of the world’s most amazing places;
I “pay it forward” by saving airplanes.
Then he asked how much it would cost.I told him I didn’t know but would ask around.
RESTORING A J-3 TO AIRWORTHY STATUS
I emailed Steve Krog at S&S Aeroworks in Hartford, Wis. I met him when I visited Hartford to fly a Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser for a feature article I was writing. Krog is very involved in Cub maintenance and in the Cub Club. (The Cub Club is “an international organization to preserve and promote the restoration and maintenance and use of Cubs.”)
I asked Krog to help me estimate
how long it would take to assemble and restore airworthiness to Berg’s Cub. The answer—from an experienced Cub rebuilder—came back:
“This is an aircraft that you did not take apart and is something to think about. I (the Cub mechanic) would charge materials and hourly labor. In addition, if I were pressed on how long this project would take I would say around 200 to 250 hours in labor.”
I laid this all out before Berg. I pledged to put all other matters aside and devote my Fridays and Saturdays to the project. We agreed to work together and got started.
We hoped to have it airworthy by the first of July—in time for a few test hops before flying 70 nm south to the 28th Annual West Coast Cub Fly-in July 6-8, 2012. at the Lompoc, Calif. airport (KLPC).
NOT JUST A REASSEMBLY…
I first saw the shiny yellow fuselage of Berg’s J-3 under a sheet of plastic on two sawhorses in the back of his shop. The engine and engine mount were bolted to a stand on a rolling table. Berg said the wings, tail feathers, ailerons and cowlings had all been refurbished, and were stored at his business warehouse down near Los Angeles; he assured me they required only finish painting.
Another rolling table was piled with bolts, fairings, nuts, and other parts. Berg told me that everything that he had removed during the disassembly was on that table. I took a look at the pile of disparate parts, which lay under a coating of dust, and realized that this was not a mere reassembly, this was a PROJECT.
Reassembly means putting big parts back together. If there’s confusion, a quick look at the manufacturer’s parts and service manuals will quickly clear away doubt so that the assembly work can again move ahead.
A project requires patience. Often it was not immediately obvious how to do the simplest tasks: Which hole in the firewall should I route the two engine primer lines through? And was the windshield really held in place by those flimsy-looking (and often-drilled!) quarter-inch C-channel?
The Piper J-3C-65 parts manual is, as I said at the outset, marginal. Some of the illustrations are inaccurate; for instance, the stabilator trim yoke assembly is shown upside down. Fortunately, information regarding the correct yoke orientation—and a smorgasbord of other Cub topics—has been and continues to be covered in Cub Clues, a bimonthly newsletter published by the Cub Club.
So even though the official parts and service manual for the Cub is laughable, thanks to the Cub Club I did have sufficient guidance whenever I ran into
a head-scratcher.
MVP AND RATE DETERMINING STEPS
Earlier I mentioned the two types of aviation maintenance. The first kind is the most impressive (visually) and takes only a small portion of any rebuild or refurbishment time. I call it Maximum Visual Progress, or MVP. Big pieces such as the landing gear legs, elevators, rudder and tailwheel are installed in short order.
After MVP comes the “it’s all done… except for the details” part of the project. This is the part that takes the majority
of the time.
After watching the MVP part of the project leap forward, the details seem to take forever. For instance, some years ago Berg had started installing the rudder pedals and floorboards. I found that he hadn’t installed the rudder pedal return springs on the front seat rudder pedals, and to gain access I had to cut two holes in the newly painted belly fabric.
Berg built two legs that we bolted onto the front of the fuselage for reorienting the fuselage so the fabric patching was easier. This small task is an example of the rate-determining “detail” steps that counterbalance the speedy MVP steps.
THE ENGINE INSPECTION
Unfortunately Berg had not pickled the engine. The oil sump was still full of clean oil but I couldn’t return it to service without a thorough inspection, so I removed the number-four cylinder, piston and connecting rod. The crankshaft and connecting rod looked good but the cylinder was badly rusted, and I didn’t like the look of the camshaft.
We had three options. I could tear down the engine and inspect it. We could send the engine out to an engine shop for a teardown inspection and hope that we would be able to get it back without spending too much money. Or we could look around for another engine.
It would have been perfectly legal for me to do the teardown and inspection; I had the tools and the manuals, but decided to get an expert to do the engine work. Berg and I would work on the airframe reassembly.
We got a $4,456 estimate for the teardown inspection from a very reputable shop. Then we found a complete, ready to assemble A-65-8 engine listed on the Trade-A-Plane website. After being reassured by the seller, Mr. Gordon Kittridge of East Corinth, Vt., that the engine was complete, that all the parts were well preserved and were either new or had been refurbished and came complete with yellow tags, we asked the price. He told us it would cost $5,500 plus about $500 to ship it to the West Coast.
After a second phone conversation to gain reassurance, we bought the engine. It arrived less than a week later and after inspection proved to be everything Kittridge said it would be.
SUN ‘N FUN
Just after we ordered the engine, I traveled to Lakeland, Fla. to attend Sun ‘n Fun, the first big airshow of the year. There I spent a lot of time talking with Clyde Smith, Jr.
Smith is known as The Cub Doctor for his knowledge of Piper tube and fabric airplanes, and he was more than willing to share his experiences and advice with me.
I also bent the ear of Jon Goldenbaum of Consolidated Aircraft Coatings to get pointers on how to create an invisible patch on polyurethane-painted fabric. He provided detailed information that helped me patch the holes from the installation of those rudder return springs.
While I was in Florida, I drove over to the Sensenich Wood Propeller factory in Plant City and spoke with Charlie Denny about wood prop maintenance.
And I took pictures of every J-3 I could find at the airshow.
A GOOD WORKING RHYTHM
I returned and we got into a good working rhythm of MVP and detail progress. John Warren, the owner of Let’s Go Ballooning, Inc., the hot air ballooning business in Paso Robles, Calif., and Berg’s safety pilot when he commutes to the L.A. Basin every week, also pitched in and proved to be a conscientious and able helper.
By late May the engine had been cleaned and assembled by a local light engine assembler, we had hung it and the airframe was on its gear. We had replaced the Goodrich expander tube brakes with STC’d Grove disc brake assemblies, and the tail surfaces were installed and control cables rigged. Our Cub fly-in goal was in sight.
That goal took a back seat to family matters as my mother’s health declined quickly in late May. Mom passed on in June. June weekends were spent with my brothers and sister and traveling back and forth to Seattle.
Bob Berg and I attended the Cub Fly-in—by car this year, but next year we will be Cubbing it.
Next month I’ll be writing more about our Cub Resurrection project. Will the engine run? Will it fly straight and level? Will our Cub tell us, “Son, thou didst well,” or will it say, “Son, thou didst not fly well, but I forgive thee.”?
Steve Ells has been an A&P/IA for 38 years and is a commercial pilot with Instrument and Multi-Engine ratings. Ells also loves utility and bush-style airplanes and operations. He’s a former tech rep and editor for Cessna Pilots Association and served as Associate Editor for AOPA Pilot until 2008. Ells is the owner of Ells Aviation (www.EllsAviation.com) and the proud owner of a 1960 Piper Comanche. He lives in Paso Robles, Calif. with his wife Audrey. Send questions and comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
RESOURCES >>>>>
J-3 CUB INFORMATION
The Cub Club
CubClub.org
Clyde Smith, Jr., The Cub Doctor
can be contacted at:
Univair Aircraft Corp.
univair.com
PARTS, ACCESSORIES AND SERVICES
Aircraft Spruce & Specialty Co.
aircraftspruce.com
Consolidated Aircraft Coatings, Inc.
conaircraft.com
Sensenich Wood Propeller Co.
sensenich.com
The Wag-Aero Group
wagaero.com
