Scott, Not seeing the wings, but just reading your post and having some experience with Ercoupes and other airplanes, it sounds very much like your wings are not airworthy. Sure would hate to see a news article about a wing failure on and Ercoupe with you inside. Serious intergranular corrosion is typically not correctable. Be sure/ be safe. Lee Browning
Hi everyone, Scott here, I am kind of a lurker on the list but I wanted to post on an old topic. A while back, there was some conversation about fabric vs. metal on wings. I have an album created waiting for approval that should be of interest. I am recovering a set of wings on a Coupe that spent a lot of time in west Texas, not flying much but getting an annual every year. The airplane then went to the owners son and moved here to Michigan. The fabric was pretty worn and the last cover job was about 1982 so the decision was made to recover them. When we started opening the wings, I was pretty hopeful of the condition due to its previous location. I had quoted about 85 hours of labor based on scuff, prime and recover but after the fabric came off that went out the window. One wing looked ok at first, but after closer inspection I found some waves in the outer spar. The waves were actually hammer marks. The airplane must have hit a post or something years back and the fix was to hammer it back straight and then rivet a U channel reinforcement to the spar. The other wing was much worse. When the fabric was removed, there was a LARGE nest at the outboard tip. The nest was perfectly positioned so that it was almost impossible to see through the inspection holes and everything within several feet of the nest were so severely corroded that they were scrap most of the damage was in an area that was very difficult to see or between the skins and the spar/ribs. So thusly the process of replacement and prep for fabric began. The 85 hour quote is obviously out the window, and it will be closer to 300 hours of labor by the time all is done. There was also some pretty serious intergranular corrosion on the spar caps, but we were able to save them. Much worse and the wings would have been too far gone to be saved. These wings were on a flying airplane, and the IA doing the last three annuals I know well. I can attest to his professionalism, and verify that the annual was not "pencil whipped". The thing about fabric is that every 30-40 years you have to take everything apart and inspect. You can do the same thing with metal wings with removing the skins, but you don't have to if you don't want to. With the fabric you have no choice. Normally it would cost about $6k for me to cover a set of wings including materials (Superflite or Stewart's). A job with this much labor would be at least twice that but the owner and I have worked out a trade for some of the labor. Anyway, that's the long winded version of what we found when we opened up the wings. Now that they are almost done, the structure should be good to go almost indefinitely, the fabric if stored inside, another 40 years. One last note on the covering pictures. I used full tapes over the ribs and screws instead of dollar patches. This will help keep the finish from cracking over years of use. ____________________________________________________________ A Mom's Weight Loss Tip A Mom's Weight Loss Tip http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/4bc2147bdb2c81e2e9est03duc
