For the past few months I have been helping a friend repair/restore a Citabria 7KCAB which he had purchased as a project. On the surface it had looked quite nice but as we dove into the project it became quite apparent the aircraft was in need of a lot of TLC.
As we had thought the project would not take a lot of time I offered the use of my hanger and moved my project to another friends hanger for storage. As always seems to be the case, the project has taken much longer than anticipated.
During the annual inspection we found that 3 of the 4 wooden spars in the wings had longitudinal cracks along the grain which led to replacing the spars with aluminum spars per STC. Once the fabric covering was removed from the wings, we dealt with cracked/deformed ribs, leaking fuel tanks, deformed fuel lines, etc.
There were many other issues we found in the fuselage, engine and landing gear but despite it all, it has been a fun project to work on and the end is in sight. Today we are ready to start covering the ailerons and LH wing and by next week will will have all the ribs and spars for the right wing back from paint so we can assemble that wing.
RH wing fabric covering removed prior to disassembly
LH wing ready to cover after all repairs
LH wing in rotiserrie inside booth we erected to help prevent dust contamination
