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I'm not so worried about the concept of a fixer-upper T-33. The manufacturing engineer part of me would love it. I'd be trading off an extensive amount of time and labor for initial cost though. My current engineering degree is targeted at cad/cam/cnc machining in an aerospace manufacturing company. The idea of reworking the aircraft from the ground up is the type of thing I enjoy. I'm used to taking a manufacturer's technical drawing, manually building a solids model in catia, then exporting to mastercam and programming the cutting paths for 3,4,5-axis and then CNCing the part. I've also got some experience in QA and first article inspection and CMM use. Over the next few years I'm totally rebuilding the F-84F cockpit fuselage section I have. I have the manufacturer's technical drawings on microfilm. I'll know after that project if I have the time and patience to do it with a full T-33. For the foreseeable future I'm pretty well tied up with the F-84F rebuild though. I guess that wouldn't stop me if I ran across a few great T-33 deals though.
I'm an engineer too, and actually learned cad/cam on the job. Pretty easy after knowing how to do diff eqns, finite methods, etc.!
Anyway, seems like lots of engineers do restorations, same is true for me. Except I like WW2 planes. Less money to fly..