Messerschmitt Bf-108 - Restoration Update #23 - September 2022

all right Paul setswitch here with weeks aircraft doing a update on the bf-108 project uh it's of course the summer time we've been working our best we can on the project it's uh of course it's always uncomfortable for us here in Florida with the heat and everything so things are progressed a little bit slower on the 108 over the summer time but we are accomplishing uh some some tasks on the aircraft we're going to talk about a few things we've done to the fuselage also the right wing which is close to being finished and also the engine so let's go talk about some progress we're making on this project [Music] thank you [Music] all right everybody here we are on the right wing of the 108 which is nearing completion as you can see all the skins and all the rivets are finished on the top of the wing this went nice and smooth no real issues here at all one of the big things on the right wing was this damage skin right here and if you remember one of the earlier episodes there was a big a couple holes and there's a big tear along this uh skin of course that new skin has been replaced and installed looking really nice uh one really strange thing about the top of both Wings actually is this area right here this is a very odd thing there's these three rivets that are spaced out away from the rib this is the rib and these rivets here basically don't do anything there's actually a little piece behind there a little joggle piece of aluminum that picks up these three holes and what's really odd is the other Wing had the same exact thing except it was down here but on the same rib and the only thing I can figure out is that somebody when they drilled this skin they misdrilled where the rib and the holes was going to be they drilled it right here so instead of remaking the skin this is just a theory they just plug the holes with a few rivets and again they did the same thing on the other Wing I don't know if that's the case or not but I think that's very strange I decided to put that back because it's kind of the original part of the airplane but that's just an interesting note that there were errors made along the way in fact there were a few errors on this Wing where there's actually supposed to be three millimeter rivets three millimeter rivets instead they went with fours there's a four here a four here there's numerous places where they must have shot the rivet it didn't go very well they had to drill the rivet out they had to open a hole bigger to a larger rivet and there's a number of those on this wing and I think I mentioned in the last episode also we talked about the swing the overall general assembly of the Swing wasn't as neat and clean as the left wing it must have been a different group of people that were putting it together because there were some errors and flaws along the way which is kind of interesting to know but again human error these airplanes are all built by hand this is 1938 and it kind of gives an idea and you can see all these little mistakes along the way but that they fixed and when the airplane was being built this is finished let's go look at the back side of the wing and see what we have left to do there we are here we are on the underside of the right wing uh mentioned earlier top Wing is all finished the top Skins are all shot on and basically all we have left to do in this Wing is the application of the bottom skins but you can see everything has come out really nice we had to go back and repaint all the Bucktail rivets because unfortunately all these rivets that we're using on this Wing are the purple anodized which kind of stands out like a sore thumb so we come back and we hand paint all the bug Tails which takes quite a bit of time but we want that to look original and before we actually finish this and put the bottom skins on there's a couple things that have to go on there's all the electrical conduit which on this Wing is just a single piece that runs through very similar to the left wing except the left wing had two pieces of conduit where on this wing all you have is the wingtip light so there's only two wires that go out that run through this conduit this has to go in now because if you close it up first you're never going to get this back in there again there's a bunch of clamps and screws that hold all this on this originally was one piece I could not get the wire out of the original conduit so I had to make new conduit in two pieces to install so that's ready to go in a few other things they have to go on inside the wing also are some of the aileron Bell cranks and the flap drives all these are much easier to get in now before we actually put the bottom skins on so once that's finished up we will start commencing with the riveting now riveting kind of came to a stain seal on us because I was actually waiting for some special rivets that I had to order I ran out of a certain size those rivets have come in so hopefully soon we're going to start putting this wing and finishing it up making good steady progress on the right wing once this Wing is completed we're probably going to move on to either the horizontal stabilizer or the flaps we can talk about that in another episode all right so that's basically what we've done on the uh right wing we're making some good progress now let's go check out some things we're doing on the fuselage all right here we are at the fuselage we haven't been doing a whole lot on the fuselage but we've been trying to fill in a little bit of time with some concerns that we have and after a closer examination of basically this area right here this portion of the fuselage has this rib that actually lays right inside of that portion right there this is where the outer Wing course butts up to the fuselage after closer examination really didn't take that much to realize that this piece is no good this was actually damaged in the accident they had made a repair to the back side of it it's got some tears in it some wrinkles some holes drilled into it for repairs that they made this basically in overall in poor condition so I have drilled that off and also once we determined that that piece had to be replaced there are also some pieces on the front right here this is actually where the Leading Edge is this area was damaged by the third strike along with the landing accent which it had once that piece has been removed which also has to be replaced we found that these two ribs that lay up inside of this area are also damaged so those have to be made over again and also another thing I noticed that this piece right here which makes up the front spar with the front Wing attaches front attachment point of the wing is cracked right here I believe this probably was damaged in the accident also so I believe that this piece itself has to be removed to remake this whole component and because of that I want to make sure that we have this Dimension from the where the main Spar attaches which is two points right here to the front attaching point right here that this distance is maintained so Dave works with us here who builds all our stands and fixtures he came up with a little bolt on steel piece that bolts onto those positions is welded to the stand itself so that is going to keep all that in line so if I do have to remove this or anything else in this area we have a known starting point we know that the wing fits where it is right now so that's very important to keep that in position another thing we're working on is the trailing Edge the trailing Edge piece is a large fairing that wraps all the way around here we had to remove this actually for three reasons one the piece itself which is magnesium is damaged and corroded the second reason being full of dirt dirt mud daubers rat poop olives up inside of here and then the last reason was to remove the electrical system all these small holes that you see on the outside of the airplane all the wiring is attached through these holes inside of the fuselage and some of these holes actually were behind the fairing so the only way we could get the screws off to get the old wiring out which we talked about in another episode was to remove this fairing piece so all that's come off we cleaned this out right here these fairing pieces have to be remade we actually haven't gotten into that yet pretty complex pieces that have to be redone but hopefully we'll get that worked out we also have done the same thing to the other side the piece on the other side wasn't quite as bad here but both pieces the Fairing and the rib not that great so we're actually going to remake both of those components also so again something that's not a priority but we're always trying to think ahead in the project of things that have to be done some of these pieces we may actually have to send out to a specialized shop to have made so we like to kind of Branch off every once in a while and pull some things off the airplane to make sure we can get some of these parts in the works so when we get back to the fuselage we have those parts ready to assemble another thing we've been working on that's related to the fuselage are the canopy and the windshield frames uh the right side piece is actually right here this is actually a steel frame this is actually the right side door entry door to the airplane all these pieces including the front windshield frame are actually steel and they're covered in Plexiglas that makes up the whole entire canopy these pieces had to be cleaned up they had a lot of paint on like the rest of the airplane but we couldn't sand blast these parts because of all these holes so these holes are here to attach the place of that soon if I would have sandblasted the part or bead blasted it I would have basically filled this thing with sand which would have been in there forever so basically we had to manually between a little bit of chemical stripping and some abrasive with the Scotch right wheel on a grinder we had to grind all that paint off and after we took all that off the frames themselves kind of on the Rough Side just not condition wise just how they're put together they're all welded not the smoothest things and since these parts are very visible when you walk up to the airplane we're spending some time painting priming sanding and kind of filling on all those rough spots to the frame Eric's been doing all that the rest of the pieces are in the paint booth getting their final primer and eventually when it's all white filler primer is all finished they will go to final color and then they'll be ready to install the plexiglass so we're making some progress on that too a little bit ahead of ourselves there but again always trying to keep some progress on these parts and trying to move forward on anything on these airplanes just to keep the project moving along on a steady pace let's go check out what we've done to the original engine on the airplane all right everybody here we are with the original engine they came out of the 108 project we were actually in the machine shop because the engine is being temporarily placed in here until before it goes into storage and when we're working on all these airplanes a lot of people of course ask the question what is your reference material for these airplanes airframe power plant we're lucky enough to have an original me108 airframe handbook which is actually unfortunately it's all in German but it is an original copy and actually I'm still working with someone to get this translated really good book that gives us a lot of information but of course I need to get that translated we also have this on on a DVD that I'm actually able to put into computer and look up parts and stuff so that's one bit of information that we use for the airplane we also have the manual for the engine now this is actually in English as it was translated 1938 Edition which is kind of cool because that's the year the airplane was actually built of course the engine is an Argus as10 C and a little bit about the engine um we are going to use a different engine on the project that we're working on this engine we had to remove everything that we needed for the new engine that included quite a bit of stuff but we're going to talk about that a little bit about the engine itself Argus is 240 horsepower inverted V8 and it is a carbureted engine unlike the db605 that's in a 109 that was fuel injected this is a carbureted power plant and a little few things we had to take off the first thing of course are the magnetos the airplane has two mags which is typical for any type of Aviation engine and it is a Boston egg yeah quite a heavy piece goes onto this airplane engine just like this slides on there the other one goes on the other side like that it is a MAG that is particular to this engine I don't believe you can use this on anything else I think it was designed for The Argus we're going to pull both the mags off as you can see those are probably going to go to overhaul the next thing that's attached to the mags is the ignition harness and this is it right here now this is actually an original piece that actually sits right in there like that is a set of screws that hold it on onto the case of the engine as you can see it has a set of leads that come down now originally The Argus had these leads these are the original design right here and they're actually kind of a really cool design there's the one that's separate right there and this is the the spark plug that was originally used on the power plant which is a little Bosch spark plug and what's cool about this whole setup is is that the spark plug was placed of course into the spark plug hole like that and what was done once all this is tightened up to hold the lead in place it had this little clip you'll actually lay that on top you put that on top of there and you just actually turn that little screw and it clamps the lead down to the spark plug which is actually very clever it's a cool looking thing also unfortunately we can't use this setup and nobody else does either because you can't get the original little tiny Bosch plug so everybody actually converts the engine to a modern plug which requires you to change the entire lead design which is kind of too bad if I wish if I can find some more of the original plugs I like to go with this but if you don't find original plugs and you put this harness in the airplane then you're kind of you're kind of defeating the purpose of trying to you know fly the operate the engine so hopefully we'll take a look and see if you can find some original spark plugs but from those cases I guess you're going to have to go back and modify the system like everybody else does the next thing that attaches to the engine uh is the intake pipe and that's this long piece right here the intake pipe of course brings Carver the air and fuel mixture into the cylinders and that piece is sup right there it's made up of Steel and aluminum it bolts on to the cylinders like that attached to that are some intake pipes and these go right here like that and there's a rubber coupling and a clamp that holds it in place there now you have the same thing over here and then the remaining opening ports of course are exhaust so that makes up the intake system also these small holes that are on the top there are small primer lines that attach to this so when you go to start the engine you shoot some raw fuel into the intake which eventually Works its way into the cylinders and gives you some starting capabilities there of course attached to the intake pipe is the carburetor Argus has two carburetors there's one right there that pieceless bolts on to the back side like that now these carburetors are interlinked to each other because the control mechanism comes off the left side of the airplane so they are linked together and we'll talk about how they're linked together a little bit later on so that's the system there and then on the back of the engine there's a few other things we've had to remove and let's talk about some of these components too right on the back of the Argus engine here you have several things going on this right here is part of the oil pump it is a dry pump engine that means it has an oil tank that's separate from the engine oil comes into this position right here goes through and it's actually a gear pump that lubricates the engine there's also a filter that's what this little crank thing is right here you actually turn this and it wipes off some screens and you're supposed to pull this and check for sediment so that's where the oil pump is another interesting thing on the airplane engine is this right here what attaches to this is this component right here this actually has three purposes the first purpose is is the attack drive this portion right here attaches directly right in there and of course as the engine is rotating it rotates this piece goes to a cable which goes to the RPM instrument inside the cockpit the other purpose of this piece is to link the two carburetors together you can see it has these two little rods right here the carburetors here it has a linkage that comes off attaches to here so as you move the throttle in the cockpit that Rod is pushing at this Rod which is moving this and these are linked together and then it moves that same motion to the carburetor that is on this side and the last thing that this thing does it's a multi-purpose thing is that it actually was part of the air start system there's actually three ways to start the Argus there's a hand crank starter there's an electric but on some of the earlier planes they used an air start and that's what this piece is here you see eight ports on the bottom and you see a port right here it was attached right there there were lines eight lines that came off each line went to a port in each cylinder and there was actually a connection that goes to the firewall and goes to the side of the fuselage of the airplane you would open up that port and you would actually put a compressed air bottle into the system and that air would come in go into the cylinders and start rotating the engine as a starting procedure so kind of an interesting piece nobody uses the air start I don't think it was a very efficient system everybody I've talked to that runs the Argus either on the stork or the 108 uses an electric or the hand crank system but an interesting component another piece that's on the back of the engine is the starter itself it has this component right here which bolts right up inside of there like that let's just saying I'm doing it backwards there we go like that see I almost forgot it's been so long and so that sits right there and the electric part of the starter sits right on top of there it is a 12 volt starter this is an early 108 so it has a 12 volt system and also this piece right here is part of the mechanical hand crank system I think we did on one of the other episodes we had the engine on the airplane still we were able to turn the engine through with this crank so it has multiple ways you can start the engine so that's that and then over on this pad right here is the generator this airplane does have an electrical system and a battery but it has a generator that bolts on right there it does have an extra pad over here which also could be installation of the generator probably dependent on the application or the airplane you can move the generator to either side and then of course the last thing that goes on the back right here is the fuel pump which is this piece right here and this piece is all nice and shiny because it's actually an overhauled piece going through some of our Argus spares I found four overhauled fuel pumps which is actually nice it's going to save us some time that piece bolts on right here and it's attached and it's driven by the engine by this little device right here turns the pump this is a dual pump jumo design and of course all the fuel lines attached to this fuel comes in from the tanks to the firewall to this component and then there's lines that Branch off that go to the carburetors and that's where that component goes right there now this piece is finished we don't have to do anything with that but as far as the magnetos the starter the generator carburetors all this is going to have to be sent to Germany to get overhaul because of course there's nobody here in the states that deals with these components basically that is what makes up all the accessories that attach to the to the Argus at some point we're going to put this engine away in storage and then we're going to clean up all the parts the engine on Parts which are actually going through the cleanup and paint right now those pieces are all good and we'll start attaching all those pieces to the new engines so when we're ready to install the engine we'll be set to go and get that engine installed on the project we're a long ways from that but we're always thinking ahead like I said before people think we're jumping around and going in different directions but as long as you're a good forward progress that's the important thing in a restoration so basically that's what we've been doing on the 108 project hopefully check back with us and we'll have the right wing finished and then we'll go on to some other projects like the horizontal stabilizer and the flaps which I think we're going to take on next so hopefully you enjoyed the video more than welcome for questions and comments like you always do and hopefully check back with us in another few months for more progress on the bf-108 [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Kermit Weeks Channel - Over 380 Videos to See!

Views: 65,657

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Id: um0p0iAeYm0

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 21 2022