Folks,
I posted this over in the Piper forum but there's likely folks here with Pipers that are not over there so thought I'd post here as well. With the unknowns of how the PA-32 spar AD will land, and I’m sure it will in some form, our club decided to go ahead and re-spar our Archer. I thought folks might want to have some sort of record on how this can go.
While the club has owned the plane since new 1982, it was involved in a mishap 25 years ago that resulted in the wings being replaced. The source for the wings has no documentation of where they came from so whatever the inspection looks like we’ll fall into the worse-case scenario.
There are also very few machined spars out there from Piper and if something dire was put out AD-wise we didn’t want an Archer shaped sculpture in our hangar waiting for a solution so we decided to act.
The plane has about 7500 hours on it and will be getting a new engine in late summer. The thinking was that with the new machined spars and a new engine we will either have an airplane that needs little else for some time (it flies about 250 hours a year right now) or if we decide that we want a new plane it will be worth more.
That was our thinking anyways and only time will tell if this was fortunate or folly. We started the project 26 Feb and right away ran into issues.
We asked for quotes from both our on-field FBOs and while the one we chose was cheaper, it also was much more detailed on the LOE to do this. We might have been OK with the more expensive one but we simply did not have faith in the estimate.
First issue as the A&P started to take the wings off. The GFC-500 autopilot wiring was not run IAW the STC and the FBO was not comfortable with removing it. The installer came over from VT and reran it as it should (no time to do it right, always time to do it again) but his error so we were not charged for it.
Airframe Components was chosen to do the work. They were great to work with and their videos on how to build a wing crate were spot on. We have some handy guys in the club so we got together and built it in an afternoon. If you need one let me know - $500, which is what it cost us to build.
We contracted with a local shipper who took then from NH to IN. This was preferable in our mind as any other shipper was going to be putting it on and taking it off a truck to consolidate loads. As it was, the local shipper was cheaper as well.
This is on our trailer – it went on a flatbed for the trip
The wings sat for three weeks until the jig was ready for them. Once they start on them it’s a 3-day job to replace the spars in both wings. However, we ran into issues right away.
When the left wing had been put on 25 years ago the A&P had drilled a lot of extra holes. Clearly not good and Airframe Components had to replace the outboard spar to fix that.
The next issue was cracks in the wing walks and lower inboard skins. This really isn’t a surprise given the age. Talking to a flight school they seem to end up finding the same thing every three years. Replaced both.
Wings returned to us April 18th so call it 7 weeks to get the work done. One of our club members has the spray gear so we painted the wings ourselves and touched up eleventy-billion rivets. We then had annual done and replaced the seals at the top of the main struts since they were off anyways. The plane is back in service but the autopilot won’t power up and we need to do an IFR cert so I’ll fly it over to VT next week for them to figure that out.
Costs. Ugh – We’re lucky we were in good financial shape – We estimated $40K for the effort but it looks like this.
The main spar replacement $32,600
Wing walk skin replacement $2,695
Rear lower inboard skins replace $ 3,895
Replace LH wing outboard spar $3,895
Paint for the wings $346
Wing transport $4,200
Crating materials $500
Disassembly/ Reassembly $7,554
Total $54,570
Did we make the right decision? Magic 8 ball says check back later but what I do know is it’s as good as we can make it.
I posted this over in the Piper forum but there's likely folks here with Pipers that are not over there so thought I'd post here as well. With the unknowns of how the PA-32 spar AD will land, and I’m sure it will in some form, our club decided to go ahead and re-spar our Archer. I thought folks might want to have some sort of record on how this can go.
While the club has owned the plane since new 1982, it was involved in a mishap 25 years ago that resulted in the wings being replaced. The source for the wings has no documentation of where they came from so whatever the inspection looks like we’ll fall into the worse-case scenario.
There are also very few machined spars out there from Piper and if something dire was put out AD-wise we didn’t want an Archer shaped sculpture in our hangar waiting for a solution so we decided to act.
The plane has about 7500 hours on it and will be getting a new engine in late summer. The thinking was that with the new machined spars and a new engine we will either have an airplane that needs little else for some time (it flies about 250 hours a year right now) or if we decide that we want a new plane it will be worth more.
That was our thinking anyways and only time will tell if this was fortunate or folly. We started the project 26 Feb and right away ran into issues.
We asked for quotes from both our on-field FBOs and while the one we chose was cheaper, it also was much more detailed on the LOE to do this. We might have been OK with the more expensive one but we simply did not have faith in the estimate.
First issue as the A&P started to take the wings off. The GFC-500 autopilot wiring was not run IAW the STC and the FBO was not comfortable with removing it. The installer came over from VT and reran it as it should (no time to do it right, always time to do it again) but his error so we were not charged for it.
Airframe Components was chosen to do the work. They were great to work with and their videos on how to build a wing crate were spot on. We have some handy guys in the club so we got together and built it in an afternoon. If you need one let me know - $500, which is what it cost us to build.
We contracted with a local shipper who took then from NH to IN. This was preferable in our mind as any other shipper was going to be putting it on and taking it off a truck to consolidate loads. As it was, the local shipper was cheaper as well.
This is on our trailer – it went on a flatbed for the trip
The wings sat for three weeks until the jig was ready for them. Once they start on them it’s a 3-day job to replace the spars in both wings. However, we ran into issues right away.
When the left wing had been put on 25 years ago the A&P had drilled a lot of extra holes. Clearly not good and Airframe Components had to replace the outboard spar to fix that.
The next issue was cracks in the wing walks and lower inboard skins. This really isn’t a surprise given the age. Talking to a flight school they seem to end up finding the same thing every three years. Replaced both.
Wings returned to us April 18th so call it 7 weeks to get the work done. One of our club members has the spray gear so we painted the wings ourselves and touched up eleventy-billion rivets. We then had annual done and replaced the seals at the top of the main struts since they were off anyways. The plane is back in service but the autopilot won’t power up and we need to do an IFR cert so I’ll fly it over to VT next week for them to figure that out.
Costs. Ugh – We’re lucky we were in good financial shape – We estimated $40K for the effort but it looks like this.
The main spar replacement $32,600
Wing walk skin replacement $2,695
Rear lower inboard skins replace $ 3,895
Replace LH wing outboard spar $3,895
Paint for the wings $346
Wing transport $4,200
Crating materials $500
Disassembly/ Reassembly $7,554
Total $54,570
Did we make the right decision? Magic 8 ball says check back later but what I do know is it’s as good as we can make it.
