Warbird Information Exchange

some significant progress has been made to N-917Y. a couple of weeks ago the bomb bay/ passenger cabin was finally painted and systems are being reinstalled in the fuse. cables have been strung to the tail. what was really fun for me was being able to crank the coffee grinder runner trim control for the first time in a lot of years. when we received the aircraft the cables was all loose and the mechanism barely turned. now it's smooth as glass. next will be the elevator trim. we are trying to get as much mechanicals in the front office completed before the sparkys start the big untangling of the electrical systems. in the meantime the main hydraulic apparatus above and behind the pilot area has now been cleaned, painted and mostly reassembled. i still have not figured out an easy way of attaching photos to this thread but i will figure a way. while work was being done restoring control to the tail, we also did some riveting in front of the rudder pedals. there was a panel removed to allow ease of removal of the rudder pedal assembly and at the time remove the center console for refurbishment. the pedal assemblies are all reinstalled and it was time to reinstall. i add pics as soon as i can


mustangbob
utah

last night was a lot of head scratching removing cotter pins walking from the back to the front and back again to try to get the rear control surface locks to operate smoothly. they work but if the rudder and elevator are not just right you have to apply a lot of pull to the lock lever in the center console to preload the locks. then when you move them and the pins snap into the linkages then the lock lever is fairly smooth. is that the way of it. do you pull the lever to preload the control surfaces on an A-26 and then move the control inputs to line them up prior to pulling the lever into the the full lock position or have we perhaps missed something in the rudder/elevator control spider in the back? the main hydraulic rack has been reinstalled permanently and looks b....'in. also working on all the devices that go in the nose gear well, heater components for the gas fired heater and such. the sparkys come in once a week or so from their busy schedules to untangle the mess of wires that seem to go endlessly throughout the aircraft.

more updates later.

I have had some problems logging in to my Photobucket account recently, but here are the latest images mustangbob51 sent me.







T J

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Make my day, punk!

Beautiful work Bob!
JR

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The real JR

thanks! we are just about to be finished with all the cabling to the tail. just need final tensioning and safetying. working on the forward janitrol heater, we are going to build a test bed to fire it and make sure that everything works before we do the final install. we have a couple of sparkys that have joined our volunteer group. they spend a couple hours a week starting to get the spaghetti untangled. the hydraulic system in the cockpit is well on its way to being final. 90 percent done and 1000 percent left to go!

guys, we are in desperate need of a flap motor for N917Y. ours is defunct and without spending a lot of cash to have ours rewound, it would be nice if someone had squirreled away one that we can bolt into our plane. please, if anyone has a lead on one of these please contact me at eight zero one seven zero three zero five nine nine.


PS if anyone has a source for the universal joints for the flap drive shafts please drop me a line.



thanks to all

big thanks to the real JR from "special K". he put us on to a stack of 25 of these motors 5 of which that were officially yellow tagged a hundred years ago but all appear to be in great condition. they were very reasonable too. one more thing to cross off the 500 page list of things to do to get 917Y back in the air.

to try to bring you up to date on N-917Y we have been getting most of the cockpit put back together and a couple of old "sparkys", Bob and John, have been helping out greatly by tending to the wiring of the old bird. a lot of attention has been put into getting the cockpit roof ready for reinstallation on the plane. the tail group talks to the cockpit and work is being done to install airliner seats for passengers in the bomb bay. the engines have been gone through by Anderson Aeromotive of Idaho. they are in storage ready for installation when the wings are reinstalled. the nose gear is being reassembled and the nose gear bay and doors are the current focus of labor to get that behind us. hoping to start work on the wings this spring.

more as time goes on

PICS PICS PICS PLEASE!!!!!

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Christopher Soltis
Dedicated to the preservation and education of The Sikorsky Memorial Airport

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