Does anyone here have any experience of a Mosler 35hp engine on a Minimax? I've been offered a Minimax fitted with a 35hp Mosler at quite a good price, but I know nothing about the 35hp Mosler. So if anyone has any experience with this engine, good or bad, I'd like to know about it before I go committing myself to paying out good money.
I've attached three photos of the plane. In them you can see that the tyres need replacing, and the trailing edge of the left wing has warped upwards, but other than that it seems quite good. So I'm in a bit of a quandry as to what to do.
Does anyone know how hard or easy it is to overcome the trailing edge warp on the left wing? Will I need to completely re-cover the left wing, or is there another way of overcoming the warp?
That's what I'm afraid of. With trees at one end of our runway I'd worry that it won't get enough height to get over them. So I'd have to wait till the wind was coming from the opposite end before being able to get airborne.
There is a way around the power problem though. I have a spare 462 Rotax that I could fit, although it would mean making up a special set of engine mounts to do so, and then altering the cowlings to fit.
Either that or I could do the repairs that are necessary on my fuselage and fit the wings and tail from the 91 to it. The repairs on the fuse are pretty straightforward, although I will have to do some re-covering of the tail section. I'd also have to nick the undercarriage legs off the 91 for a while, but I already happen to have a new axle ready to fit, so that and the struts would allow me to fit the wings.
If that "curvature" is from the lifting of the rear part of the ribs, I had a similar problem that I kinda cured by adding a 1/4x1/4x1 strip to the end of each rib, clamping it down and gluing the crap out of it. made one for each rib. I think there is an actual fix for it that is similar. Just make sure that it doesn't interfere with aileron movement. You can inspect for the glue delamination by removing the aileron and looking.
+1 to what Puff said. There was a Bulletin out from TEAM a long time ago. I think I made some 36 gusset blocks. I installed them in pairs (top & bottom) on about 4 ribs at a time. You can "jam" temporary sticks between the rear spar, and the trailing edge to take the wrinkle out of the fabric, and then clamp the gusset blocks to the ribs, and trailing edge. It's a little time consuming, but an easy fix. Obviously, you have to remove the aileron, and as Puff said "make sure it doesn't interfere with the aileron movement".
Just to update you all, I won't be buying that aircraft. Our runway is too short and the trees at the end too high for it to be able to climb above them on take off.
Instead I've bought another one, that has a 503 donkey on the front, so that should definitely have enough grunt to get over the trees every time.
The one I've just bought is the one in the pictures below. When I got it it had a flexwing exhaust on it that made it nose heavy. You can see what the exhaust looked like in one of the pics below, and you can see that its weight was all concentrated near the nose of the plane. So I've replaced that with the straight exhaust off my other 'max, which you can see in one of the other pics.
The other odd thing about this plane is that it now has a 503 engine, but used to have a Rotax 508 twin cylinder 4 stroke engine. The engine mounts and cowlings are still those for the 508, which give the plane a bit of an odd appearance, but over time I hope to change the cowls to something more normal looking. You can see what the plane looked like a long time ago with the 508 in one of the pics below, when it was painted red all over.
One other thing I found strange about this aircraft is that a previous owner has fitted a GA type push pull throttle. You have to push the end of the throttle stick with your thumb to unlock it so that you can move it forward or back, and there's no leverage in it, i.e. the movement on the stick is the same as on the actual throttle cable. This means two things, the throttle is heavy to use, and you have to be very careful how much you push or pull the stick as even a very small push on the stick will cause the engine to rev quite highly. You can see the throttle stick in one of the photos below, as well as the extra fuel tank on the floor of the cockpit that adds another 10ltrs to the fuel capacity.
I'm going to replace the GA stick with a more conventional quadrant type throttle that has a 2:1 movement, i.e. 2" of lever movement to 1" of cable movement. That will not only make the throttle lighter to operate, but will also allow for much finer tuning of the engine revs.
That throttle control should be a push/pull for large adjustments, and a TURN for fine adjustments. It could possibly go back to when the airplane had a 4 stroke engine.
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