1956 310
This plane had been sitting outside at Corona Airport, untouched, for 18 years. Other than looking just terrible with the usual flat tires, flat struts and dirty paint, it was remarkably undamaged and unmolested. Nothing had been changed since it rolled out of the factory. Even the radios were original. We aired the tires and struts, and pushed it into the new owner’s hangar. He was very concerned about the condition of the engines, stating that if the engines were junk, he would simply part-out the plane and be done with it. I bore-scoped the cylinders and found nothing amiss. We then changed the oil, put some fresh Avgas in the tanks and purged the fuel lines. New batteries, of course. I squirted some Avgas down the carbs…
And it started right up! I couldn’t believe it. The gauges worked, oil pressure came right up and both engines were idling smoothly after about 30 seconds. After 18 years? Crazy! Well, once we knew that we had two good engines, we pushed the plane back into the hangar and started on the real work…
Props were sent off for overhaul and AD compliance, side windows were replaced (the windshield looked fine, go figure…) As usual, all of the flight control surfaces were frozen tight so those came off and all of the bearings were replaced. I had to remove some of the landing gear system just for cleaning and to replace a few of the frozen bearings, but I was able to get the whole system rigged without too much trouble.
Right now the owner is working with an avionics shop to replace the radios and add ADS-B. Once that is done, he will fly it to my shop so I can do a complete overhaul of the landing gear system and replace most of the flight control pulleys. Stay tuned…
1969 310P
This was a fun project. The owner bought a salvage 310P fuselage, tip tanks and tail. Then he bought wings from a Turbo 310R. But he didn’t want turbos so he bought IO-520 engines. But the induction system on the wings was set up for turbos so, using Cessna parts, he played mix-and-match until it all went together. The guy is a master craftsman and when he was finished, it all looked magnificent. The difficulty arose when he tried to register it. The fuselage had been in a landing incident where the wings were damaged. The lady at the FAA would not register the airplane without a DAR approving the repair on the wings. I explained, several times, that the wings were in fact, never purchased. They were scrap metal. They were not installed. Used, serviceable wings from a completely different airplane had been installed. Nope, she insisted the wings had to be inspected to make sure the repair was airworthy. There was NO repair….
I was going to elevate the issue to FAA management but the owner had sufficient funds to simply hire a DAR. The guy showed up; I explained the situation. He just shook his head. Signed off on the “repair” and gave the owner a fresh Airworthiness Certificate. Crazy. Anyway, it’s a really nice airplane and the owner is enjoying it.
