FREE Abandoned Airplane... If I Can Start It!

welcome back to rebuild rescue i'm at my local airport because i started taking lessons probably about six months ago so the other day i'm talking about rebuilding stuff about getting stuff started and some of the guys at the airport were like hey there's an airplane that's been here for years and they don't even know how many years nobody knows how long the airplane's been here right here it is it's a 1968 or 69 cessna 401a turbocharged twin engines 520 cubic inch air cooled turbocharged so they're tell me about this airplane and i'm like i got to see it that just sounds like something that i'd love to see you love to mess with the engines are locked up it's been here forever it hasn't ran it could be 10 years could be 15 years could be 16 years i don't know nobody knows i did some research i tracked the owner down just have a conversation and the owner said to me you know if you want it you can have it if you can get the engines to run wait have it like for free for free so the deal is if i can get it running i can have it for free these things in good condition these things sell for like 200 and some thousand dollars this is not in good condition this has sat outside it has corrosion on it it's got a window that's been open getting rained in there's birds that have been living in it i think they nicknamed it the bird house i'll take you guys for a tour of this thing i haven't looked at it yet because i just i wanted to look at it first with you guys if you can't tell i'm really excited about it just because it's probably going to be the toughest task i've had yet because it's an airplane who knows i mean i know a little bit about airplanes but i figure it's got spark plugs it needs air it needs fuel and it needs compression i have that so let's take a look at this and see what we can do this airplane having these twin 520 cubic inch turbocharged engines i don't know how fast it actually is or was but it's a good size i think it's like an eight passenger airplane i mean it's got de-icing on the wings it's got de-icing on the props as well it's got like i said i mean if you can see lots of bird droppings all over all over this thing if you look down in here there's been birds living inside of every cavern every crevice of this thing so hopefully there wasn't anything chewing on any of the wires or anything like that [Music] i haven't been inside this airplane net when we got here today the entry door here was wide open all right that's why it was wide open wow look at the interior in here oh my gosh it literally smells like a chicken house in here so these were known to have really nice leather interiors they were pretty much like one of the nicest airplanes you could get and unfortunately this one having the window open and the door open just completely ruined the whole interior which is such a shame i don't know what everything looks like as far as under the carpet here and how much moisture got underneath there and possibly you know corroded the floor but i would say judging by the way this door panel here looks it's not good i mean this actually even just it's actually here just it's there's nothing holding on it i don't know how long ago it broke and obviously we're gonna need some of the controls one of the interesting things about an airplane is you know trying to start it you have a propeller spinning right when you try to start it so you can't try to start it by standing anywhere near it you know you can't work the throttle outside like you can in a car or a truck it has to be done from a safe safe place so you know it's like are these throttles frozen are they not yeah like that right throttle is frozen well then you have your prop controls these have to work you know to control the prop you know and they they're they're frozen you have a mixture you know these are a little bit different where you adjust the mixture on them that which they're pretty they're frozen pretty much everything is locked up and or frozen of this so this is going to take a while see what we got here we got some sportiest pilot shop brand new map and terminal us terminal procedures got some air worthiness papers here we got the official flight manual so that's the 401a got the registration got a tow bar which that's always good a little bit of an old hat here i'm still waiting for something to jump out at me [Applause] empty a lot of the areas around the door here or moldy because it'll be interesting to get the carpet out of here maybe do a video we can take all this stuff out of here let me know if you guys want to see that we could take take all the stuff out of here and you know try to clean it up even there's some some headphones some oh some snap on allen wrenches some other headphones i don't think we're going to be using those anytime soon a little afraid to sit down in here honestly ah this is disgusting you can just see how the water coming in here this is going to be the worst part well floor is not as bad as what i thought it was going to be at least what i'm seeing now i have to pull the seats out and get this all cleaned up to see you see how bad it is got some old batteries in the glove box flashlight so here's the control lock it keeps it from moving in the wind locked up solid it's going to need some tools i'll need some tools to get this out but i'm curious to see what the flight controls are free it has some really cool features i mean this is an electric trim anybody who's ever flown knows that uh having the electrician is really cool it's got a complete engine engine monitoring system in it it does have autopilot which is right here i highly doubt it'll ever work again but but we'll check it out got the old king 155 com radio apollo cnx 80 yeah we got an avid on flight max ex500 which in its day this was awesome you know in its day like all this stuff in here i know for sure was like you know awesome newest and greatest right what do we got here oh gotta have the emergency procedures all the breakers over here so we have a a left and a right battery look at this amp meter literally it's it's an old dial amp meter we have you know the prime left and right prime for the fuel pump right here we have the controls for the mags right mag left mag for the right engine right mag left mag for the left engine we have auxiliary fuel pump because it's always good to have a backup which has safety switches on it as well um and the starter button oh that one's sticky oh that's not good looks like there's a couple different settings here so i don't even know where the batteries are in this thing so yeah we got to figure out where the batteries are we got to get some juices system we have to spray down all the components that we're going to unscrew because we already know both engines are locked up solid i can't move the propellers you know even if i hang on one so we're going to try to get it started it's going to be an adventure put a post in the comments like are we going to get it started is this going to run are we going to get one engine around are we going to get both engines to run am i going to fail miserably put a post put your uh put your your uh your guests down yeah want to be fun ever since i've talked about this thing i've wondered you know what it looks like under these these engine cowlings and i've i have looked up a lot of stuff online it is turbocharged it is a 520 cubic inch big block i mean and if you think about the cubic inch it's a six cylinder 520 cubic inch the pistons in this thing are like seven inches round the connecting rods on them are huge so yeah so let's get this galling off let's take a look at it wow yeah look at look at the pile of bird crap from what everybody's been saying about this airplane my guess is it's been here for 16 17 years not running in place this is so disgusting obviously we got to get all this stuff cleared out before we'd attempt to start it who knows what it's hiding you know it's one thing to get an airplane that's been a hanger queen for 20 or 30 years much easier than getting one that's been a chicken coop for the last 16 years you know i kind of made the bet in a way that you know that i'd get it running so yeah so hopefully we can well it's even got some gammy injectors in which are not cheap [Music] i should have wiped all the bird poop off at first you know i know yes this is all bird droppings so we get to work on bird droppings today probably wondering what we're doing with their home you guys are taking my apartment right it's like cool there's people here oh it's moving a tiny little bit all right so this cowling hasn't been off in a number of years yeah this this doesn't look good like i was saying like looking at the interior the avionics and and everything in the interior back when this was parked i would be willing to bet was was the best of the best back then and the really cool thing this is the first time i've seen a turbocharged airplane engine so it's literally got a big old turbo on here which anything with a turbo charger or a supercharger is extra cool so so that's exciting now it does mean that it does have extra controls though and it's something that is extra that could be locked up so uh you know trying to get it started will it'll make it even more interesting yes it's really going to need a vacuum and pressure washer to even get this close to clean enough to be able to see anything i mean it's it's disgusting to unbury the spark plugs here the spark plugs looks pretty good because it's been covered in uh in straw complements of the birds some of the cylinders have been sealed off for the most part just because the valves would be closed depending on what part of the stroke they're on but i think it's probably going to be four out of the six are going to be somewhat open one or two the cylinders the valves were completely open and these are really simple exhaust systems that come they're open so literally it's just been open to the air moisture's gonna be in there those are usually gonna be the ones that uh that rust the most so luckily uh this is a continental engine and not a lycoming continentals have the cam down in closer to the oil pan it's actually in the oil pretty much so those cams stay lubricated even if it's sitting oil stain on them the lycomings sit up higher so they'll get rusted when they sit for a long time they'll get spalling you have to split the case basically you got to rebuild the whole engine because the the cam get some rust on it on these it wouldn't be the case but these uh continental cylinders from what i understand have a couple more issues than the uh then the lycomings do you know so we'll see see what these look like i did bring my borescope with so we can get down inside these cylinders after we get the plugs out and see what they look like i could bypass a lot of systems on this engine just to get it started because it is a magneto ignition and there's two of them on an airplane for redundancy just in case one goes out your engine doesn't go out when your engines go out an airplane it's a bad thing so really as long as you have a ground wire that you can control for safety to shut these off you can literally find the starter solenoid which is going to be somewhere around here you can literally just power it up from here if you wanted to and you could start this up without going through the whole airplane system as long as you have a ground a remote ground somewhere to shut it off and as long as everything's out of the way one of these props spinning at uh your spinning period i mean they're they're they're metal they're like a knife um you don't want to get in their way and also too once they fire up you know it's what makes them move so you know this airplane has really flat tires but we are also going to have to chalk the tires tie it off make sure it's good because we want to be safe so oh my god what i get myself into these have dual spark plugs so you have plugs up top goes to one mag and then the other mag like they swap top and bottom so six cylinders there's 12 spark plugs we're gonna have to pull all these plugs out because we're gonna have to clean the plugs obviously we're going to check the cylinders see how much rust is in there i'm really curious too we'll have to make sure the air intakes are clear chances are the injectors here they're going to be clogged we're going to check the fuel tanks because chances are there's a ton of water in there yeah just from sitting at least there's not as much stuff to clean out on this side it's frozen solid yeah the linkage is frozen solid which that's not good either all right so we pretty much got uh most of that stuff unburied we'll get our lubricant out our penetrating oil and we'll get those all loosened up so we can check the cylinders out i have a feeling we're going to go through a lot of this today [Music] all right [Music] so [Music] remember which one goes where first one came loose working on anything older i always worry about um you know like a spark plug breaking off in the head because they're so corroded or rusted into it this is an aluminum head with a you know metal spark plug so you know obviously the aluminum can corrode pretty easily in a perfect world i'd be in a shop and i would have pressure wash this whole thing before taking any of the spark plugs out but hey this thing is so big i don't see it fitting in a shop anywhere and b it's really heavy and with flat tires so all right let's see what the first spark plug looks like here this will tell us what we're in for so it's got a good bit of rust around here if you look inside the spark plug there there's a ton of lead deposits but there's also some brown rusted corrosion down inside the spark plug so it's what i expected obviously i was hoping it would look brand new and stuff but that wasn't going to be the case oh just broke the ratchet it's always good to have a back some backup tools [Music] that's a lot tighter if you saw our jeep video i showed you how to not take spark plugs out with an electric ratchet one of the major reasons why i'm not using electric ratchet as far as taking these out when i put them back in i will is just because of what i learned on that video and these are like 35 bucks a piece so i don't want to break any not to mention you can't just go down to your parts store to get them yeah so pretty much all the spark plugs we've pulled out so far they're all rusty that means there's been rust and corrosion in the cylinders [Music] i wonder where the batteries are in this thing if i design an airplane where would i put the battery i wonder if they're back in that compartment back there one thing i just did notice too the fuel tanks there's a fuel tank on the right behind the engine there's a fuel tank in the wing and there's a fuel tank out on the tips they call them tip tanks i don't know how many gallons this holds but i'll bet you this holds in the two 250 gallon range and i'll bet you the burn with these engines with as little as i know about them i'll bet you these together are probably burning 36 to 40 gallons an hour so 36 to 40 gallons an hour think about that one hour in the air 40 gallons so aviation fuel is about 550 right now let's make it six for math right so 40 gallons one hour times six two hundred and forty dollars two hundred and forty dollars to fly one hour in the air now you could be flying at i believe in this and you could easily be doing like 250 miles an hour so you know i don't know what that comes miles per gallon i'm not sure that comes to but but miles per dollar is really expensive the other thing to consider you know is is maintenance wise these engines i think these time out they call it you know timing out tbo uh they need to be rebuilt every i think these are like 1600 or 1800 hours and to rebuild one one of these has to be 30 000 just one so if you do the math per hour the expense of operating one of these airplanes is insane and that's not to mention you know your propeller needs maintained your uh everything and and they have to be maintained to such a a high level uh you know because obviously you're flying over people's houses and you know falling out of the sky isn't too much fun unless you're skydiving but these spark plugs here are pretty new at least they look that way and this one does not want to come loose all right so it's this is the same as the other side it's rusty the top spark plugs in in these engines usually stay cleaner than the bottom ones the bottom ones are probably going to be even more corroded rusty carboned up so yeah they're just they're all rusty that's not what i wanted to see we got all six spark plugs out i didn't get the bottom ones out yet i'm gonna have to get the bottom ones out but i don't have the right wrench with me oh there's one so maybe i will be able to get the bottom ones out as well because we'll have to clean all those up before we attempt to fire it up got them loose nice all right well we got those wires out i didn't think i was going to be able to without the right wrench all right these are the same way they're pretty stuck in there so i'm just going to loosen them up enough to get some oil back behind there that one's really tight it did come a little bit that first one that's not coming out probably has a ton of corrosion the bottom spark plugs are usually the worst because all the moisture sits in the bottom of the of the cylinder and it looks something like that so that's aluminum corrosion right there from inside the cylinder oh man wow yeah so that's rust and aluminum in the spark plug what do you guys think the chances are now that this engine is going to start put us on the comments you know don't cheat don't wait to the end put something now are we going to be able to get this thing started so this uh this spark plug the lower spark plug is definitely stuck i don't want to try to get it out and i can't get any penetrating oil into it from outside so i'm just going to try to fill that cylinder up with penetrating oil so it can seep from the inside down i really think it's our best bet we're going to need to do this anyway you know just because we know these cylinders are going to be rusted almost solid i'm pretty sure so so we'll go back on the other side we'll get the lower spark [Music] plugs of wondering if any of you have ever flown in one of these have any of you ever flown one as a pilot i've only been in a i think one twin engine smaller general aviation aircraft like this and the performance of them are uh it's it's really impressive think about it if these are i believe 350 horsepower each so it's a 700 horsepower airplane that's really cool no water burns 40 gallons an hour i was trying to clean the carbon off this spark plug lead and it pretty much disintegrated if you look at this one it's the same way so these wires may not work to see if we can get this to run we may have to replace the wires so this one actually has oil in it that tells me one way that there is oil in in the cylinder maybe this cylinder had some weak rings or something and the last time it was ran it left some oil on it so this cylinder will probably be the only one that's not rusty because it had a coating of oil in there oh for some reason i have a feeling that this definitely would not have started and definitely may not start oh yeah that one's full of oil as well yeah so six and two actually um had some oil in the plugs so they're gonna be the uh the cleaner cylinders all right see if this other one loosened up or not i don't like it [Music] all right so i can't get this cylinders bottom plug out without breaking and i know it's gonna break it's loosening a little bit back and forth but what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna fill this cylinder with two cycle oil if you guys watched any of our other videos especially our jeep video you know it was a locked up engine we filled up the cylinder with two-stroke because it's really good lubricant and it will burn um that oil so it's a good lubricant to use if you've got a cylinder stuck so i'm gonna fill this one up if i had enough penetrating oil i fill it up with that just for those threads but i don't but i'm gonna use the two-stroke it'll get the cylinder coated as well so hopefully we can get this prop here unlocked you know get the engine unlocked and if you haven't watch the jeep video obviously after you're done watching this video go and watch that video um yeah i gotta stop saying um [Music] all right that should be enough to get in there and and get in right on those threads so we're gonna let that soak for a while so hopefully then we can pull that plug out without stripping anything out next we're going to bore scope all the cylinders so we'll be able to look in there we'll see how how carboned up they are how rusted they are and really know the condition uh of this before we do anything to it these are very expensive these cylinders and although this engine hasn't ran in a really long time if these cylinders in good condition you know they're worth a good amount of money so we definitely don't want to go ruining anything you know just for the sake of of trying to move things around so you know so we'll scope them we'll check them you guys get to see exactly what it looks like inside there and i'll get to see what it looks like inside there you know one thing i didn't do i didn't do what i probably should have done first which was see if the engine had any oil in it [Music] oh she's got some oil let's see how much she's got 10 quarts tops off at 12. so that's good that means it's been sitting in oil anyway this is like my newest toy i mean tool and it will show us what it looks like inside really good high definition as well this thing is really cool it's a it's a newer borescope um i may put a link down in the description that uh you know a place where you guys can pick one of these up if you'd want one because they are newer and they're really cool i mean uh you could check your bore or you could check your tonsils if you wanted to [Music] what is a proctologist chef it's really cool you can do a 180 with a camera 90 any infinite you know adjustment and it'll hook up to any ipad or phone or anything like that all right so this will actually either record or take pictures directly to your phone we're gonna hop in uh cylinder three here and see what it looks like and that one's at top dead center so that is it so i'm gonna have to be able to move that one to see that one so we'll try try this one here so there's the top of the piston which you can tell is quite a corroded quite a bit there's the wall of the cylinder so when i was talking about a lot of rust and corrosion that's what i was talking about there's a valve you can see how that one was open for 15 or so years to the atmosphere so let's check this one where the plug is stuck we did pour a ton of oil in here so there's all the oil sitting in there that we put in there which is good that means it's soaking and look at all that rust oh my gosh all right let's go check the other ones this is the one uh cylinder six i believe which seemed like it had a good bit of oil yeah see now that one you can see the uh the side of the cylinder now you don't see any cross hatch or anything like that but you can see there's a good bit of oil from what is running right there sitting inside the cylinder that's a good sign so that will probably actually be pretty good because it had some lubrication in it here's cylinder two so you can see some cross hatch down there in the cylinder but as you come up to where the intake valves exhaust valves would be there is a good bit of rust and corrosion one three and five are worse for some reason than two four and six so two four and six really didn't look terribly bad i mean they're rusted but you can tell the rust isn't as thick on the odd side on the right side of the engine it's real thick rust it's it's pitted into the uh the sidewalls so as long as we can get it unlocked i think we'll be good to go but it's just getting unlocked so we're gonna get some more of that two-stroke oil and we're gonna fill these cylinders up just to get that lubrication in there i'm going to try to move the prop you know to jar it loose we may be able to dry it loose we may not hopefully we can because if we can't we can't get it started so try to get this thing out you know what i'm going to do first is i'm going to fill these cylinders up all right so while this is still soaking we're going to get some lubrication in all these cylinders ooh which a lot of it's going to run out the bottom because i have the plugs out so first we're going to stick these spark plugs in and fill these cylinders up and get a good amount of lubrication in there i don't want to scar the cylinders if if they are savable i don't want to ruin anything all right let's try this again he's already had some oil in but a little extra won't hurt [Music] all right so we got some lubrication in in all the cylinders i did have to put the bottom spark plugs in because it was coming out i'm going to try to rock back uh the prop back and forth try to get this thing turning it does have oil in it so that's good really it's just getting it unlocked now so [Music] ah there she goes all right she's loosened up now one of the things to watch for or to listen for when you have a airplane with mags that hasn't been started in a while or any engine with mags is uh there's a click that you're gonna hear from the coupled one when the mag fires basically i haven't heard that yet so all right it's loosened up it's a good sign all right um it's loose it's actually spinning really good but i don't hear the mags uh clicking so unless these are different than mags that i've ever uh heard every time that the engine you know would would spark would fire you would hear it click and it's not clicking at all so they're probably stuck which would mean we'd have to uh to pop the mags out clean them all out service them probably set the points in them just to get them to fire hopefully that's not the case because that's going that would take like a while so yeah i can't hear them at all clicking so this is the uh the throttle right here you know it is fueling mechanical fuel injection uh but here is the throttle controls so if you guys could watch this let me know i'm gonna go inside the airplane and i'm gonna work the throttle a little bit let me know if it's you know if it is working or if it's not because when we actually try to fire it up fired up i got to be in the airplane i could be clear of the prop so that has to work it's not like i can stand out here and operate the prop now you know maybe some of you knew someone crazy enough to do that at one time or maybe one of you have done that at one time but i'm not gonna do that so i like my arms connected to my body so a lot of times these cables get corroded and rusted when they're sitting which this one obviously is they're not the easiest to get to either all right it's about full throttle there so the cable that goes to the linkage was tight we were able to knock it loose so i'm gonna go back in the airplane if you guys can watch and see make sure the the mixture and throttle see if that's you know loosened up is it going all the way down yeah nice all right so before we fire it up before we try to we're gonna have to make sure it has fuel we're gonna have to look in the tank see what the fuel looks like i mean it's you know 15 16 20 year old i don't know it's it's whatever fuels in there is really old but the thing with an airplane it's not like i can go down the road to the gas station and get gas so uh and it is 100 octane aviation fuel as well so you know there's a port underneath the wing that you can test the fuel and and you know see what it looks like see how much water's in it and stuff like that i don't have that tool with me right this minute so i'll go get that tool we'll test it i did look in there it looks like there is there is some fuel i can't really tell how much i would say not very much so it's got about an inch of fuel in this in this right tank we'll grab a fuel can and we'll check and see how much is in there all right yeah that's not opening so eventually we'll want to open that so i'm going to go ahead and soak it up all right so cylinders are still soaking our throttle works our mixture control works we have a little fuel in the center tank if that's a main tank or not a main tank i'm not sure but but there's about an inch of fuel in there yeah so next i want to see what do i want to see next i think we're going to check and see where the battery is it may have a battery back here which would make more sense to me who knows what's going to be in here oh so there's nothing in here it's an empty trunk a little bit of corrosion starting but it is definitely trunk where's the battery what's up here in this compartment see if it's empty all right so looks like empty storage compartment but it looks like it's in actually in good shape but again really cool really cool airplane as far as baggage i know talking to a pilot that had flown one of these uh extensively he had said as far as amount of weight that you can carry because you're on an airplane you're limited on how much you can you can haul in it you don't want to fall out of the sky what he had told me is like if you can fit it inside of it you can haul it they're kind of like the uh the station wagon of the sky so yeah with all that extra storage compartments i mean you got one in that wing one and that way you got a big one in the front you got one in the rear you're good to go so we'll go inside and uh see if we can open up uh the compartment i i believe the batteries are probably gonna be in the back all right so i'm thinking that the batteries are gonna be in here or the battery there should be two batteries maybe one battery i don't know let's see where else they would be i can't promise there won't be a bat or something that won't fly out of here it's really clean back here so the battery's not in here the more i look through this airplane the more i think to myself you know would it actually be uh a good airplane to fix and to get back up uh flying again you know or i'm am i crazy thinking that i mean because really if you gutted the inside out literally just took everything out cleaned everything up and either you know had new panels made or found uh you know a um a salvaged uh airplane or something maybe one that was wrecked or something that had a mint interior i think i could you know could replace all this stuff pretty easily as long as there's no corrosion you know inside of here [Music] hey it's a battery [Music] yes [Music] pop this post terminal off it should pop right out but assume the relays and stuff must be in here i'm thinking the wire runs down in there and there's probably starter relays and stuff in here because i didn't see them i didn't see them out by the other engine so [Music] so my buddy just said he's like it is stuffed in there all right so we got the battery out i think it's a 24 volt i would assume so because it has six cells [Music] six and six so it is a 24 volt battery it's a 700 battery and again that's uh you know anything aviation it's gonna be expensive the battery itself doesn't look too out of shape i didn't test the battery so it is it is i don't see any fluid in it so oh no there's fluid in there all right so kind of wonder if i could charge it or something get my tester and see what it tests that 6.8 volts it's good that does have uh have some you know some voltage it may be able to be saved i mean it it's too old to to have an airplane to fly with as far as faa standards go but just to start something and run something it would be fine so just because i'm curious [Music] we may take a battery that i brought with us which is 12 volts i may hook it up to it just to see if it would have enough energy just to turn over the starter a little bit and get that engine moving [Music] [Music] all right so it's always a defining moment so this is only 12 volts but it's actually pretty high amperage in comparison to the other battery so we have it hooked up to the negative we have it hooked up to the positive i'll go inside all right so i'm inside the airplane and we're gonna try to fire this thing up so we have everything tied off we have all the wheels chocked we had the brakes on to me the first time that we turned this thing over hopefully it starts sounds like it should start it's got fuel pressure it bleeds off pretty quick after it does have fuel pressure though i think the mechanical pump will take care of that so uh man a little nervous clear prop [Music] right just got a lot of nothing there clear prop [Music] so that has enough voltage to turn it over but it's not the the correct voltage or amperage so we're gonna have to you know get 24 volt i would take two 12-volt batteries and wire them uh i think in a series series or parallel one of the two but the problem with that is it's going to have a really high amperage i believe which wouldn't be good for uh for some of it although we're not meaning to fly this thing uh out of here or anything like that so i don't think it would really hurt it but you know amazingly the engine was locked up we turned over by hand now it's turned over by the starter so really the next thing we had to do is get a 24 volt battery in it clean the plugs up put the plugs in get some fuel in it then we would try to fire it up so let's let's get that stuff done good feeling this one's going to be the same way yeah so it's definitely got some corrosion see anything in the tank and the tank inside looks pretty clean the seal looks questionable so yeah so that that actually seems to work okay so we let this thing set for i don't know probably like two or three hours now so um i'm gonna try to get this out hopefully we don't uh strip this out because it would negate all the work that we did today so we're gonna keep running this thing in and out a bit until it's loose enough yes so we uh we got it out nothing seems stripped yeah we're good so that problem plug you know by filling the cylinder up with some oil working it in and out real slow back and forth it allowed the oil to get down to the threads eventually loosen up so we're good to go oh that's so bad saw corrosion so we went over to the shop we cleaned all the spark plugs up to show you guys later we did find a 24 volt battery and we found a 24 volt jumper as well so we have both of those hooked up i'm going to go inside here we're going to see if the engine spins over a little bit better with the 24 volts all right let's try this again clear prop so the fuel truck's coming we're gonna get some fuel in the tank uh check for leaks and stuff like that then put the plugs in and then we got fuel we got spark plugs we got plenty of air out here so then we're going to try to get this thing fired up you're like this doesn't look like zero zero whiskey looks like the birdhouse that's what we call it so i gotta put like uh 20 gallons in this tank and that's it yeah this one over here has got a really rusty chain on it so it's been empty for some time but uh i think we'll go ahead and just put a little bit of fuel in it yeah hopefully it doesn't leak out anywhere right yeah cool it does jack by the way this thing's gonna catch on fire it's gonna catch on fire we're gonna die we're going to die whatever you believe on that note let me go out by the grass here not just kidding yeah it hasn't ran in at least over 15 years i kind of want to see the engine run it's going too soon we hope all right there's a good bit of rust in there but it's coming out clean now kinda all right so not very clean all right it's getting cleaner yeah that's not good why would there be fuel coming out of the middle of the wing i guess i should have put a couple less gallons in first it's dripping fuel there now so i'm going to have to pull uh i get to pull it off quick and figure out where it's coming from i will figure it out here [Music] oh man there's all kinds of fuel leaking out of here and yes i see where it's coming from all right so right there is the leak that's a good one [Music] [Music] [Music] what is it with mice squirrels nuts and old things there's this new shut off which makes zero sense all right so it's day two here with the cessna project yesterday we ran into a couple different problems we got fuel in and in the tank one thing that you can't do when something sits so long you can't check all the fuel connections until you have fuel in the tanks we put a little bit of fuel in the tanks and which there's six tanks so which is really crazy but anyway there's six tanks there's three in each wing we put fuel in the main tank and a little bit after it started leaking we were able to shut the tank off and everything but you know we definitely definitely wanted to get that shut down we found the issue it's a union a fitting that is actually at the wing root where it comes into the cockpit so first thing we got to do today is we got to get some new o-rings in we luckily found the o-rings for it rather quickly so we're going to get those in today that'll take care of that leak the rest of it looks good on the right side also we got to go get a battery we have to clean the spark plugs up then we got to get them back in the airplane and hopefully we get it started this is the culprit probably if this was an automotive o-ring which is probably the exact same thing would be like 10 cents but this is like a 10 o-ring so it dried out it split there's two of them in the union luckily we were able to locate two of these o-rings really crazy considering it's a 68 or 69 uh airplane but uh yeah it's probably a standard old automotive uh o-ring so we're gonna get those installed we'll get that union back together get this thing fired up it's going to be super tough to get these in there it's the only thing when working on airplanes sometimes these are worse than cars as it pops right on put the other one on there so i got the o-rings on i'm going to get a little bit of grease on them here hopefully that'll help everything slide over top of it all right let me get some wrenches on there we'll get that tightened up completely uh felt like a good fit it was kind of hard to get the fitting over top of the o-ring so yeah that's a good sign yeah there's only one way to tell i'm sure not gonna do it with uh 20 gallons though guessing we'll put some fuel in there and then we'll see if it if it leaks or not if it does leak you know it's it's an airplane we're not gonna fly again we're just trying to get the engine started so we could you know cut that union out and just use uh you know a piece of hose in between the two with two clamps i know that would seal it i like to get it sealed with this you know so it would be much nicer not to have to ruin anything well only thing we do is get fuel and find out so we got the o-rings in we put five gallons of fuel back in the tank again and it's not leaking so far so i'm gonna i'm gonna switch all the tanks around to make sure we get fuel flowing over this way she's good doesn't look like it's leaking so we'll get the spark plugs back in uh we'll get that all hooked up and then we'll power everything up and and hopefully fire this thing up oh this one went in nice yeah these are going right in nice it screwed right in get these in without having them modified so we got all the plugs in uh we had to clean up the threads on the plugs we had to clean up the threads on the heads it was uh interesting getting them in there so we'll get these all tightened up and then we'll get the wires uh all the spark plug wires uh hooked up and then and then we'll power it up and see if we can get this thing to fire off all right let's get the other side all right so those plugs are all tightened down get these wires on [Music] so if any of you have ever worked on an airplane engine and are familiar with how much of a pain getting spark plugs in and out is or getting these wires screwed in or screwed out or attached post a comment let me know what you think about it because i can tell you it's not fun especially when there's 12 of them per engine right so all the plugs are in all the wires are connected so let's get this thing powered up and we'll kick it over and see if it'll start one of those any compression so the valves are stuck open it won't have any compression it's got some not much the tip of the propeller if you notice is really close to the ground i mean we got we got like four and a half inches of clearance the struts on the airplane have been collapsed just because they'll leak out they hold nitrogen so we did bring an air tank we're going to put air in them hopefully they stay up at least for a few hours because i really don't want to start this with the propeller that close to the ground so i'd like to see like another four inches or so of clearance let's get some air in those and see if we can get it up off the ground hmm well that did not work and i don't have my valve tool with me to pull the valve out no i was excited for that to work it did not work front tire actually has air in it see if we can get the rear shock to pump up some that'd be a no [Music] and that's not helping well it kind of sucks well worst thing that happens a prop hit to the ground i i honestly i honestly don't think it's gonna hit anyway the tire would have to blow out and then it would possibly hit all right so that didn't work too well i need to get a different fitting i don't have one here but we do have some clearance there it's it's not like we're gonna go uh real full throttle so we're gonna chance it like i said i don't i don't see it hitting i mean the the struts are fully compressed we do have air in the tires even if the tire would all would blow out all the sudden i believe we should be fine so i think we're good here we have no leaks there let's hook the battery up so we're cheating a little bit here just to power it up we're using some uh jumper cables as this battery i don't believe up in that battery box anyway and also for some extra power jumper pack all right so we got power hooked up let's go inside the airplane uh one thing we didn't look at yesterday we didn't looking at the avionics and i didn't power them up because i was kind of worried about spark smoke and fire but everything's going smoothly today so i figure yeah let's just let's fire them up let's see what works and what doesn't i'm not expecting any of them to work because they've been uh they've been in a you know pretty moist environment for the last 15 or 20 years all right let me see if i can find the avionics switch we've got the fuel transfer tanks here ft on off xmwx on off so many switches elt you don't want that on that's for sure i have no idea where the switch is all right this is start hitting switches all right we got power here don't have power here we don't have power here do with power uh here in the avadon and it is turning on it looks like everything is powering up wow there's our radar and we have we do have fuel pressure on the right on the red engine i'll have to spend some more time uh some more time looking around because there's so many there's just so many switches on this thing and some of them aren't even marked anymore because the markings wore off probably years ago all right so autopilot wonderful mom i highly highly doubt it so it's looking like the uh autopilot uh did turn on [Music] wow so the autopilot actually does work the 155 may not work and the cnx-80 may not work but it does look like everything else works though all right so let's get out there let's get this thing ready to see if it'll fire up [Music] [Music] oh my gosh [Music] [Music] [Applause] yeah so we definitely uh got no fire it's still feeling like there's like barely any compression so there's some there yeah there's some contraction there that's good wow it's a good compression again better and better maybe i should check the air filter you have a bird living in there [Music] hey there's the turbo charger [Music] which is locked up well that is not going to let it run too well so i probably should check this first but i was really excited to try to get it started tonight so i didn't check it but we pulled the air filter out which it looks like mice crawled in there and was stealing some of it for a house which really isn't a big deal what is a big deal is uh this is a turbocharged engine and the turbo charger is not spinning when i reach in here it's not going to start without the uh the turbo working so i would assume that it got some moisture in it and uh and the bearings are locked up so before starting this engine unfortunately that turbocharger is going to need serviced or at least unlocked somehow which i think means it's going to have to come out of the airplane it's going to have to be taken apart i'm wondering if the other turbo is locked up or not so now we'll go in the left engine because the turbo's locked up we'll do the same exact which i am not doing today but yeah she was definitely trying her uh hardest to turn over huh oh yeah there's good compression there oh yeah compression's getting better oh yeah that's good compression there really long rope to the problem all right this is kind of hard to tell but like i said a a locked up turbo is not good so it didn't want to fire it didn't even seem like it tried to fire like i didn't hear any backfiring out of here or anything it's questionable if either mag is is firing or not it's so hard to tell on an airplane because it's not like you can hold a spark plug against the head while you could but i wouldn't advise it anyway i'm sure there's some tooling or some kind of test equipment that you could visually reference from inside the cockpit or something but i don't i don't have any of that you know the one thing i'm really worried about is a turbo has to spin very freely because it's driven by exhaust pressure i mean if that thing's rusted solid inside there but that's something more that you know jarring it loose really isn't going to do what you need to do to get it to run or to get it to spin smoothly so you know that would have to be torn apart and pretty much rebuilt if it's going to work again i am curious it may take the cowling off of the left engine and check that one and see if it spins freely or not if we had to we probably could take the turbo off of that one and stick it over on here i mean we do have a whole spare parts engine on the same airplane but it's a lot of work and it is cold out here so i don't know if i'm going to do that today or not any chances that one's frozen up too pretty good we'll find out so we might as well check out this left side engine since we haven't haven't checked it out at all we'll see what it looks like here's the left side engine it looks to actually be a little bit cleaner overall than the right engine the log books to this airplane were lost long ago unfortunately so i don't know how many hours are on each engine or any of the maintenance that was done or not done or anything but these do like the mags and stuff they look a little bit newer so it looked like they may have been serviced a little bit more than the the other engine but the cylinders all look really good i'm gonna pop off the cover to this turbo and we'll see if this turbocharger is locked up like the other one is or not it's locked up solid so just in case any of you were wondering should you leave a turbocharged airplane out in the weather for years and years and years the answer would be no interesting it has a really cool blow-off valve right here though [Music] yeah so we have two locked up turbo chargers on two turbocharged engines um so i gotta think about that a little bit so cool thing is that you know this isn't leaking anymore turbo locked up that's bad it doesn't look too hard to get out though blow off valve on this one's pointed down which is interesting all right well let's get this thing all uh buttoned back up again so i hate to admit it i gotta throw in the towel here today we didn't get it started i'm not sure if we have spark or not it is hard to check on an airplane i'm gonna have to rebuild the mags i'm gonna have to pull the turbo off i'm gonna have to disassemble the turbo pretty much rebuild it uh which is gonna be very expensive to do just for an engine that we just wanna get running we're not ever gonna fly this someone else may fly it though so maybe it'd be worthwhile so it looks like today we didn't get it running so i do get to talk to the owner and see if we can figure out you know we did check the left engine too to see if that turbo was locked up i was hoping maybe it wasn't maybe we could swap turbos or something but it's locked up as well make sure you guys subscribe though make sure you turn on notifications because there's one thing i don't do is i don't quit we're gonna get this thing to run it may not be uh this week or next week but keep watching the channel we're going to pop that turbo off we're going to pop these mags off we're going to rebuild them and we're going to put it back on here this thing's going to run one way or the other we're not going to quit we're going to get this thing to start it'll be interesting to see what do these mags look like inside you know so we'll get these rebuilt um i do have some aviation mechanics that are really good at rebuilding these so they'll come over and we'll get these rebuilt and turbo wise you know i'll probably try to rebuild this one or pull it apart and free it up or something if we can't i'm probably just going to go ahead and buy one and like i said we got to get this thing to run even if that means getting it to run just to tear it apart and uh part it out you know i mean unless you guys you know think we should do something else with it so thanks for watching i'll catch you guys next time thank you oh i don't like when i want to get started

Channel: Rebuild Rescue

Views: 122,448

Keywords: Rebuild, Repair, Build, Vehicle, fix, mechanic, Auction, copart, nomad, travel, outdoors

Id: aVvHYTtHDrc

Length: 76min 5sec (4565 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 24 2021