Brooks Van Ette restoration at Yankee Air Museum

[gary1954]

Thanks, you da Man!

[Todd Hackbarth]

Mark,

Your vehicle restoration crew may be interested in the following web site for parts for the Van Ette or SnoGo:

www.NostalgicReflections.com

"Welcome to Nostalgic Reflections"

"We make custom dash plaques, serial plates, instrument faces, decals, dash glass, door sill plates, radiator scripts, porcelain medallions, bike badges, clock faces, and small castings for antique cars, airplanes, motorcycles, bicycles and boats. ..."

Todd

[mtpopejoy]

Thanks Todd,
That will come in handy for sure. We are still in the "easy" part. The "hard" part is yet to come and I am sure Nostalgic Reflections may be able to "save our hide" when we get there.

I will have a small update on Monday. Slow and stead wins the race!

Regards,
Mark

[mtpopejoy]

Small update on the Van Ette.

Jerry Luther has been working hard all week after work on the Van Ette. He has the entire frame sprayed "high gloss black." This entailed flipping the entire frame to get the bottom portions by himself. It really looks great.


Jerry worked at getting another coat of paint on the frame and he also removed the pinion gear from the rear end gear housing to facilitate further cleaning, blasting, priming, and re-assembly.



While Jerry tackled that task I started at the front of the body removing trim from around the grille and on the instrument panel. I succeeded in removing all of the odds and ends back to the instrument panel. Here is the pile:



Jerry's pile is bigger!!!



This gives you kind of an idea of what it looked like before:



And here it is now:




I am off to the Red Bull Air Race World Series tomorrow. Next week I will continue to work my way to the back. Then the fun starts....BODY WORK!!!

Regards,
Mark

[mtpopejoy]

Sorry I've been pretty pathetic with any updates on the Van Ette, too busy keeping up with the lawn this summer I guess.

Jerry Luther and Jerry Murray have been making huge progress on the restoration. Every weekend I am there one of the Jerry's has a new batch of restored or repro'd parts.

Lots of rot on the body. We are going to have to take the body down to the skeleton frame to repair a bunch of corrosion. Templates have been made for most of the sheetmetal that needs to be redone.

We ran into a snag within the last few weeks though. The airport authority is telling us we can't be in the hangar anymore and all of our stuff has to be removed soon. I'm talking the whole museum.

The flyable aircraft have a nice, warm home for the winter in Gross Ile, former WWII NAS. We, on the other hand, are scrambling trying to figure out where we are going to go if they indeed do kick us out of the hangar before they buldoze it.

That said, there will probably be a similar time lapse in any updates to this thread until we get a new home.

Regards,
Mark

P.S. I don't know what the heck happened to the pictures in the above post. I'll have to get that fixed.

[Second Air Force]

Thanks for the update, Mark.

Sorry to hear about losing your "home". I sure hope a new, better facility is in the offing. Keep us posted when you can!

Scott

[CrewDawg]

Wow, that SUCKS!!! I can't believe they are going to kick out a museum that is preserving some of the best examples of WWII aircraft to bulldoze a piece of Michigan wartime history! I just visited you guys back in July, and I could just picture B-24's being prepped for delivery as I walked through the hangar.

[mtpopejoy]

The airport authority has been very kind to us since the fire. There are a lot of issues that are out of their hands when it comes to our hangar.

Apparently the GM Powertrain plant (the actual former B-24 plant) is slated to close soon and from what I've heard the heat in our hangar is from steam piped underground from the plant. Plant shutdown = no heat.

When they actually do buldoze the hangar it will be a sad day in Michigan history. I wish it could be put on the register of historic landmarks but with that comes many stipulations. Big $$$ would have to be put into it to clean it up (asbestos and whatnot).

It is very surreal to see all of the pictures on the walls in the hangar with Liberator after Liberator lined up in that very hangar 60+ years ago and realize, "I'm standing.........RIGHT THERE!!!!!"

I hope we can land somewhere soon so we can keep working. The work being done on this obscure piece of Willow Run Bomber Plant history is second to none. We have heard comments from several that this is some of the best restoration work the museum has ever done.

Regards,
Mark

[Django]

That sucks Mark.

[ProfromDover]

Here's some motivation for your sheetmetal work on the body. Go to the "sheetmetal" tabs and you can see what these guys did to fix a Divco milk truck. Same sort of technology. Yours is in a lot better shape.

http://heritagesonline.homestead.com/374Resto.html

Hope you get this back together before you are forced to move.

[seabee1526]

Any room in the Aerospace Bldg YAM just purchased, or is that just for admin and display area?

[YAF340]

Steve, The high bay on the north side of the MIAT building will be a mix of display and working restoration projects. There are prints and pictures in the offices at 2800 Tyler rd. This will be a huge step foward for Yankee. The new campus has been set to be on the East side of the Airport. This can tie into the Airpark and the next step which will be a Hangar for the Flyables. Most of the projects that have moved to the T-Hangars will move into this area. A few projects that had been homeless will move in as well, the AN-2. That would be some great stuff to get up on the website, I'll bring it up at the meeting. JOE

[Second Air Force]

Thanks for the update, Joe. I'm glad to see the stars starting to align for you folks.

Scott

[mtpopejoy]

Thanks Bill for that link to the DIVCO restoration. It does appear to be very similar.
We are hoping to have a small area in the new building this summer for the Van Ette.
I have the rear fenders at home and am going to try to beat them into submission. They are pretty knarly but we will see what we can do. Also have to hammer out some small dents and braze or weld up some cracks in the side mount oil bath air cleaner....or if anyone knows where to find another one!!!!!!

Hope everyone had a good holiday.
Regards,
Mark

[Second Air Force]

Mark,

So you do homework too?!

Scott