Sand and sand, and not a beach in sight! Part 3 - The days of sanding, continue!

Finally, warm dry weather, but in New Mexico, with Spring, comes the WIND!

And boy, it has been windy over the month of March and April.

I pulled out the left wing to be the one that I would sand first, since in light of the push rod incident, this wing was already out of the trailer.

I needed to use bungees to strap the wing down.

My plan, and goal was to finish sanding down the wings by the end of May.....

With the good weather being quite flaky this spring, I have been able to finish sanding the left wing before the end of May, but way short of my goal.




Sanding the gelcoat off of the top surface took longer than the work I did on the bottom.





















The sanding bottom surface was completed in about two weekends.





















I also uncovered the air brake drive access cover on the top of the wing.

I noticed that this insert cover on the right wing will need to be re-glued. It looks like it will not take much to pop the cover off.









Closeup of the air brake drive mechanism

 The next chore was to remove the gelcoat from inside of the wing root. The area between the spars would prove to be difficult.




The spar butts and the areas where the spars meet with the wing cord end are areas that needed to be inspected per an AD.

So, the gelcoat had to be removed for the inspections.

There was a little corrosion on the metal around the spar lift pins.

Robert will inspect these areas and we will administer the repairs if needed.

I tried to save the Werk number label, but I'm sure it will be painted over.


 I cleaned out the lift pin sockets since they were filled with old grease.


I then vacuumed out the insides of the wing.

There was a lot of old resin debris, insects and dust rattling around in there.

To quote Robert.
"I'm sure just the act of vacuuming out the inside of the wing alone removed a lot of dead weight."

One wing down.