Rejuvenation - Geometry

We had been very careful to leave the float attachment gear on the plane and not to touch the flying wires that keep everything in line, but as the time came to paint the floats and all of this gear, we decided to remove it and thus do a better job painting these parts. So we built a rig to raise the plane from the lifting rigs on top. These rings are good for lifting straight up, but it is not good to put a side load on them, so we used a 6x6 piece of lumber and ran eye bolts through them. We then attached chain via shackles to the eye bolts and we lifted the plane using a chain hoist that we purchases for about $90 from Harbour Frieght. The chain hoist worked really well since it is a gentle and controlable lift. The chain will scratch or remove paint if you are not careful with it. We raised the plane gently supporting the tail with another human. Once the plane was up it was pretty stable. We then unbolted the attachment gear. This is another on of those things that is really strong as long as everything is attached and tight, but it turnned into a pile of spaggetti when off the plane. It is important to keep track of which parts go where and to remove as few parts as possible. Once some of the tubes were off I was able to really clean out some "years old" dirt dauber nests from inside the tubes. More useful load for me.... We reversed the process once everything was painted. We installthed the attachment gear to the floats first while they were on the trailer. We rolled the trailer under the raised airplane and lined everything up as best we could and lowered the plane to the gear. It took several hours to get everything attached, but not tight. The tightening would wait until we got the geometry straight. It would not do to have the floats improperly aligned with the plane or each other. All these things are possible with the miriad of possible adjustments. We found points on each wing as a reference and tightened this and loosened that until everything came into alignment. This was not nearly as bad a process as I imagined. We did a great job, because the first landing was very comfortable.

Rejuvenation - Painting the plane

Actually getting paint on the plane was very exiting. After looking at naked metal for months to actually see it with paint was really the begining of the end. While a P51 with yards of polished aluminum is a thing of absolute beauty, a Cessna 150 with dull etched (for painting purposes), is just sad. When the first coat of Zinc Chromate went on my painter sent me a photo., I showed all my friends, until I reallized that the really just did not get it. Even my family was unimpressed. I was giddy. Later that day, the first coats of gray primer went on and then the first coats of white paint. The painting process is really messy and stinky. To start with you need a low humidity and reasonably warm day or a really good paint booth that has climate and humidity controls with really good venting. Everything that does not get paint needs to be really well masked off. The air supply for the paint gun needs to be dry with astrigent sponges. Dust control is also a serious issue. The surfaces that are to be painted must be totally free of grease, finger prints, dust, or any type of contaminants. The area around the plane needs to be as clean as possible as well. Once everything is ready paint is mixed an put into the gun. You want to keep a wet line going so it helps to have someone mixing paint while the painter is going, to minimize the down time when the gun runs dry. Once the process starts you need to finish an entire coat. This means the painter needs to hold the gun up for hours sometimes. The paint that does not go onto the plane creates a terrible fog that gets on and into everything. A respirator and preferably a paint suit is a really good idea. These are not chemicals that you want to inhale, ingest, or soak into your skin. Once done properly the results are very pleasing.

Rejuvenation - The paint scheme

We had definitely decided to move away from the 80s inspired orange and yellow paint scheme that the plane came with. We were thinking about white with a blue Nike like swoosh and this would have been fine. It would look kind of like the newer 172s out there. One of my goals was to use a white that was close enough to a Krylon white that would allow easy paint patches to the floats not if but when they happen. We went to the paint store and chose the colors that would work and priced out everything. Planes use a whole lot of paint since there is so much surface area and you want to use the best paint that you can afford. You can count on spending a couple thousand dollars just for the supplies, primer, and paint. There are a bunch of chemicals that have to be mixed together to make the paint so have a professional help you out, or just let your paint guy handle everything. For my birthday in February my daughter, a budding artist, surprised me with a paint scheme for the plane. It was really pretty and striking, which is fortunate, since it would have been a very sticky family dilemma if I did not use her artwork. So the plan changed. Fortunately we had not actually bought the color part of the paint yet. I took her with me to the paint store and we picked out the colors together. I am color blind and she is not so this worked out. Afterward we flew to an airport restaurant for lunch and a helicopter ride, but more on that in another post. After all was said and done, we really ended up with a pretty plane. I have had numerous comments to the positive, and one prospective student has asked if we would be training in the pretty plane or the orange one. (The old plane colors are still on the website, and there is a slide show of the new colors) So be creative and make your plane a work of art. If you do not have a budding artist available to you there are several companies out there that will design you something cool.

Rejuvenation - Installing new insulation

The insulation in the 150 appeared to be original. It was a fiberglass type substance that turns to dust when messed with. I really like to fly with the windows open in the summer and since the interior plastic was in such bad shape it was free to blow in places. We removed all of this anyway as part of the inspection and for the opportunity to re-zinc chromate the metal. The new insulation which we bought from Aircraft Spruce comes in a roll that is two feet wide and as long as you want. It has aluminum like backing on both sides and is made of what looks like newspaper stuff. It is very easy to work with and can be cut with scissors. It is not an irritant like fiberglass. Every time I work with fiberglass insulation, I spend days picking out tiny pieces of it from my skin. To install the stuff just cut it and spray some contact cement on the backing and the plane interior and stick it in after it drys for about 30 seconds. This was one of the easiest jobs in the restoration. I am looking forward to a quieter and more friendly ride.

Rejuvenation - Skining the floats

My floats were getting new skins. This meant drilling out aproximately 1,200 rivets in each float. We started with a bunch of #21 cobalt drill bits from Aircraft Spruce. We used pneumatic drills, which are lighter weight and more powerful than the cordless kind. I eventually got to the point where I could drill a rivet with either my right or my left hand. The trick is to stay in the center of the rivet and drill straight into it. Done properly, you just have to drill the top of the rivet off and then hit it with a punch to drive it out of the hole. This leaves a hole the same size for the new rivet that will have to go back in. Not all of our holes were perfect and we spent literally hours drilling.



It took as long or longer to pull the bottoms off as it did to replace them. Once the skins were off we could really inspect the insides of the floats. They were really in pretty good shape. We also decided to replace the middle and front bulkheads. One was dented really badly, and the middle bulkheads were pretty corroded. Now was the time to do it while the skins were off. This process took about a month. We ordered new parts from EDO, the float manufacturer, and Peck Aero Products in Canada. http://peckaero.com/ Ed Peck owns the operation and he was very very knowlegable and helpful. He even offered to reskin the floats for me. I winced at the thought of all that shipping and delay. In hindsight it might have been a good plan. We learned many lessons pulling these things apart and putting them back together that I am sure Ed learn a long long time ago and not at the expense of my time and the quality of the job that we did on my floats. I had lots fo bonding time with my mechanic and I learned a ton. I probably spent $3250 on float parts. They were all very pretty and shiney and new when they arrived. We used the old skins for a template for the new ones and we got to drill thousands of new holes in these very shiney and new parts. Once all the holes were drilled we started assembly. This was very exciting to see. I had witness so much destruction as the dead parts were removed and now they were being replaced with shiney new parts. When the float skins come off the float loses a bunch of its strength and the become flimsey. As the new parts were added back on everything became strong again. Very satisfying. I was starting to get the itch to fly the plane really badly now. All the ribs and doublers were added to the bottom skins before they were applied to the rest of the float. This made the rivets much easier to install. There are only about 40-50 rivets that have to be installed using two people. One person is on the bottom of the float shooting the rivets while the other is reaching in through the inspection hole trying to buck the rivet. Doing all of this you end up covered in sealant as well. We used latex glove for most of this process and the sealant would really stick to everything. The sealant is a two part substance that actually mixes inside the tube and it has a relatively short shelf life of 6 weeks and a working time that you can choose when you buy the tube. Some of the stains from the sealant will be a part of my wardrobe for years to come.

Rejuventaion - The windows

It would not work to paint the plane without replacing the glass. The windshield and the rear window in the 150 were in need of replacement. They were not shot, but this was the time to do it. I selected the thickest windshield that I could find. The rear windows are not as critical and as far as I could tell from my research, they only come in one thickness. The website at Great Lakes Aero Products was very helpful. http://www.glapinc.com/ It is just a matter of picking out your plane from the menus and choosing a color, a thickness, and whether or not you want a compass mount.



I chose a clear windshield that is 0.187 inches thick without the compass mount. The color choices are clear, green, or grey. In retrospect, the compass mount would probably have been a good idea. When we mounted mine my mechanic actually mounted it crooked. I spent many sleepless hours that night worrying about how to remove the mount and replace it. I reality, it came off easily since we used the wrong kind of glue to start with. The windshield came out pretty quickly compared to the rear window. We removed a bunch of screws and pulled. Then we cleaned all of the putty out of the channels that the window came out of.



The rear window was riveted in, which meant we had to drill out all of those rivets. This took another several hours. After lunch we put the new rear window in. We applied the supplied felt to the window and put fresh sealant in the channels that hold the window and then we shoved. This was an ugly process with lots of grunting and maybe an expletive or two. There is no good place to push or pull on the window and the channels are very tight. The window has to fit ALL the way into the channels or it will not fit properly at the bottom, where we had to rivet the hold-down piece back in. Once the window went in, it was time to rivet. This is a loud process in general, but inside the plane, bucking the rivets while my mechanic shot the rivets from the outside, was truly terrible. I wore my Bose headsets with the ANR on. I don't think they were designed for this but it was way better than nothing. The windshield went in easier. At least I was not involved in the process as we ran out of time that day. It is really nice having new glass, and from a cost standpoint, this is one of the cheaper improvements ,especially considering the benefit.

Rejuvenation - The evaluation

We are at the point where the paint has been removed. The plane is naked and the floats are separated. We had to use a crane to lift the plane and remove the floats. I think it is shivering a little from shyness. It's time for a thorough inspection of the skin. The airframe was free of corrosion and cracks. There were a few rivets in the wings that needed replacing. We even pulled out the entire interior, cleaned and inspected everything inside and out. This was also an opportunity to re-zinc chromate everything inside, then we repaint all the exposed surfaces. This was very exciting since I have spent a thousand hours in the plane thinking that it would be nice if the paint were not worn off some of these parts.


The only parts that really needed love were the floats. These were original with the plane when it was new back in 1967. The airplane spent a number of years as a land plane while the floats sat in storage. As far as I can tell from the books, the plane was not put back on floats until the mid-80s, when it was painted and upgraded to a 150 hp engine. I think that was the last time it was on wheels. These floats have been in the water or near the water for the last 24 years. That is a huge amount of time and wetness to cause corrosion. The worst of it was at the step area and the skeg, the deepest part of the float. The skeg and the bottom skins on the front half of the floats needed to be replaced. This is a terrible and expensive process. So we began locating the parts that we would need. At least we had a new plan. The old plan which was to only clean and paint the plane was out the window. This float project would take lots of time and effort. We would work on getting the fuselage and wings prepped and ready to paint while parts arrived for the floats. We would also spend a good bit of time taking the floats apart.