Mosquito RS700 Restoration

[Airframes]

And you also get a clock with a long weekend - Monday, Tues, Wed, Thurs, Friday, Sat, Sunday, Sunday............ where's that darned coat ?!!

 

[Gary Cain]

I ended up getting an 8 day clock locally but it wasn't a working example, which is fine for the level of restoration that we are trying to achieve. No sooner had I packed this away than an elderly gentleman here in town contacted us by shear coincidence and donated his working 8 day clock along with an RCAF 6AA/378 Tachometer. The latter won't be used in our aircraft but may be offered to another organization that is replicating a Canadian-built Mosquito.

There was an issue with the donated 8 day clock though. The casing had been modified so that the entire mounting flange was removed so that it could be fitted into a Model T Ford for whatever reason. So I toyed with the dead clock to see if I could take it apart easily and take out the movement. Turned out that it was pretty simple - just removed 2 screws on the back, removed the circlip and glass face on the front and the movement came out the front with ease.

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With my confidence boosted, I set about removing the working movement on the donor clock and, after cleaning the various parts, I installed the working movement into our casing and put the dead one in the modified casing:

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I would have liked to switch out the winding knobs but there was no way these were coming out easily so I let them be. I might paint the face of the working knob with black enamel to spruce it up.

In other news, the fixed panel onto which the above clock will be mounted will need to be fabricated from scratch. As we have no drawings of the original design, I drew it up on QCAD and printed a front and back image which I taped to the aluminum blank to test the spacing of the various elements and to be sure there were no interferences in this very tight area. Here's the front face:

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Here's the view from the back of the instrument panel. Note the tight confines. The green plate at the bottom is the top of the rudder pedal doghouse.

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If the rudder pedals had eyes, this is what they would see when they looked up at the back of the panel. The 3 tubes will eventually connect to the brake air pressure gauge whose cut-out can be seen directly above the tubes. The brake air pressure gauge cut-out will need to be lowered slightly so that the gauge won't foul the doghouse.

View attachment 792953

The holes for the Master Switch will be blanked off as this unit was replaced by the Scintilla unit that contained both the Master Switch and the Mag Switches.

After one or two more needed tweaks, the CAD file will be sent off to a local company that does water-jet cutting and the required holes will be cut into our blank.

Nice job. I would suggest you leave the knobs alone... that's honest wear!

 

[Crimea_River]

Nice job. I would suggest you leave the knobs alone... that's honest wear!

True but the authenticity of the device has already been compromised anyway. I do like your thinking though.

 

[Gary Cain]

True but the authenticity of the device has already been compromised anyway. I do like your thinking though.

If you aren't restoring to like new I feel it better to leave honest wear on objects. It's part of their history.

 

[Crimea_River]

If you aren't restoring to like new I feel it better to leave honest wear on objects. It's part of their history.

Much of the aircraft's restoration is to "as new" but in all honesty there's a lot of leeway in the way we are going about it. All of the instrument panels and junction boxes were severaly scratched through removal and improper handling before we got the aircraft and have therefore received new paint. The interior has been completely repainted to preserve the wood.

However, some of the equipment that is not needed for a taxiable aircaft, for example the emergency u/c hand pump, will receive a superficial cleaning only and will not be overhauled.

 

[Gnomey]

Good stuff Andy!