Limitations of 1 Comm and 1 Nav Radio

Let me be the first to congratulate you on the purchase. Yea it might not have happened yet but a nice plane and and OK from your wife is all but a done deal.
 
Kinda curious, will you finish your PPL in the Stinson? Is your CFI tail wheel endorsed ?
 
Kinda curious, will you finish your PPL in the Stinson? Is your CFI tail wheel endorsed ?

He is about to do his checkride.... His CFI is a high flying 172 pilot :(
Mark has been flying with Joy at Texas Taildraggers to get his tailwheel endorsement. I can do some flying with him in the Stinson until he is 100% comfortable.
 
I talked with Susan at Franklin Parts again. Here are my notes. They are offering overhauled parts not new. Crank can be redone twice if not trashed. Get a spare engine if you can find one, 50% chance crank is good. Don’t be afraid of Franklins but I need to subtract off asking price for a rebuild. Approx $18-22k. She has two used engines that will be rebuilt for resale. Partner in Alabama does the work. Both of them are friendly and knowledgeable.
 
Why does it need to be teardown inspected at only 1000 hrs? Does it have a bad oil and filter report? Bore scope look-see okay?

Looks beautiful and I want to fly it.

In a dash 3, you'll be going so slow there's hardly a need for a two way radio. Send a homing pigeon out ahead with a letter to mail with your intentions. (Haha! I'm here all week folks!)
 
Because you can't afford to allow them to fail.

Personally if it was me I would fly it and not tear it down or overhaul it. Like I told Mark that bottom end may go 2500 hours or may go 5 minutes.
Even a new engine is a gamble. I have seen more fresh and low time engines have problems than high time engines.
My thought is if it made it to 1000 its pretty good. I am sure they looked it over pretty good in 2009 when they rebuilt the airframe and put 6 cylinders on it.
The only downfall is the value of the airplane once the engine goes over TBO if Mark wants to sell in a few years and get something different.
The debate is buying the airplane and having to dump a bunch on the engine if it does need overhaul.
 
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Personally if it was me I would fly it and not tear it down or overhaul it. Like I told Mark that bottom end may go 2500 hours or may go 5 minutes.
It would be nice to know. pull the top covers and have a look.
Use a dial indicator see how much the rods move on the crank. about .0025" is about as far as they should move.
won't hurt to look.
Nice thing about Franklin, you can put new rod bearings in with out splitting the case.
 
...At that time, conventional wisdom held that if more preventive maintenance were performed on each aircraft, fewer problems would arise and more incipient problems would be caught and fixed—and thus fleet readiness would surely improve. It turned out that conventional wisdom was wrong. It would take C.H. Waddington and his Operational Research team to prove just how wrong.

The Waddington Effect
 
...At that time, conventional wisdom held that if more preventive maintenance were performed on each aircraft, fewer problems would arise and more incipient problems would be caught and fixed—and thus fleet readiness would surely improve. It turned out that conventional wisdom was wrong. It would take C.H. Waddington and his Operational Research team to prove just how wrong.

The Waddington Effect

Yep,
I am a firm believer in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
 
...At that time, conventional wisdom held that if more preventive maintenance were performed on each aircraft, fewer problems would arise and more incipient problems would be caught and fixed—and thus fleet readiness would surely improve. It turned out that conventional wisdom was wrong. It would take C.H. Waddington and his Operational Research team to prove just how wrong.

The Waddington Effect
I'm not so sure that eliminaring 50-hour inspections equates to eliminating an inspection at 1000 hours.
 
I'm not so sure that eliminaring 50-hour inspections equates to eliminating an inspection at 1000 hours.

I didn’t know there was a 1000 hour inspection.
So you are saying pull the engine before tbo if it is running perfectly and not making metal?
Maybe I should go pull all my engines out of my planes for the hell of it and tear them down and look at em for no reason :(
 
I didn’t know there was a 1000 hour inspection.
So you are saying pull the engine before tbo if it is running perfectly and not making metal?
Maybe I should go pull all my engines out of my planes for the hell of it and tear them down and look at em for no reason :(
No...I'm saying that I'm not sure eliminating 50-hour inspections equates to inspecting something at 1000 hours.
 
Based on what @Tom-D wrote (and confirmed by a Franklin engine and part supplier elsewhere) : take a cheap, quick look (inspection plates, no case splitting) for bottom end wear now because unlike garden variety lycomimg and contenetial if you ruin a crank you’re deeply hosed. It’s a risk to reward thing. Hose a crank on lycomimg or contenental and it’s only money. On the Franklin they are very hard to come by.
 
Throw conventional wisdom in the wind when you are trying to preserve an antique.

I do actually overhaul them..
 

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Tom, if I had the time it would be a blast to hang out with you at work for a month.
 
We'll, seller won't budge on price and I can't get near his bottom dollar. It's a cool plane, not show quality but nice. The high time engine just has to be accounted for.
 
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