Restoring a 1977 Piper Archer

this is our archer well at least for now we're going to give it a complete facelift and change everything about it including paint interior and a full glass panel let's get to it also only a small percentage of people who watch our videos are actually subscribed so if you end up liking this video consider subscribing it's free and you can always change your mind enjoy the video when we first saw the archer we could tell it needed a little bit of love the paint was in rough shape the interior was falling apart and the avionics were old like really old like original from the factory i mean come on look at this laram but in spite of all that the engine was in great shape and it still had a ways to go before overhaul so after a ride we decided that this would be the perfect platform for some cool ideas that we had we signed the papers and she was all ours purchase price 48 000 [Music] matt wasted no time and immediately began training for his ppl charge five one nine or seven foxtrot runway one make left traffic cliff take off clear for takeoff left traffic this was a special time because we really started to learn the ins and outs of the airplane we learned what we liked about it but more importantly we started to identify what we wanted to change we really liked the performance because we had 180 horsepower but the panel was old school and didn't even have a gps anytime we wanted to fly across country we had to bring additional navigation tools and that brings us to our first major upgrade the avionics since we were basically starting from scratch here we had to do everything including gps radios and a new transponder to replace our old dying one so he said screw it go big or go home this new panel gave us way more information and drastically improved our situational awareness that made it a lot less stressful to fly into larger airports this was also about the time that tony began his flight training and he soloed in only nine hours archer niner seven foxtrot remain this frequency turn left and bravo three takes you to the base of the tower to pick up your instructor so after probably three i'll stay here with you and i will not forget my instructor knight foxtrot our training continued and tony and i both became more and more familiar with the airplane nice along the way we found time to redo some of the interior of the plane just to make it feel perhaps just a little bit nicer with the panel and the interior out of the way we turned our focus to the outside we found a local painter who does great work and scheduled to date the only problem was he was located at a very short remote field but we needed to figure out how to fly this puppy into there in addition to paint we were also replacing our windshield and pulling out the yokes to get leather wrapped the guy painting our plane was also an anp so that made it super easy we are going to the paint shop pick up our yokes because we're getting them sent out to get leather wrapped and also check on the progress of the plane see if they started any work well they had started work the first thing they did was strip the entire plane which included a lot of chemicals and a lot of sanding [Music] just leaving the paint shop they have the entire plane stripped down down to the bare metal they already have all the things and then stall then it's all fixed up and as soon as they're done with that i think they're gonna man they're gonna put that base coat down and we're we're getting painted baby after the plane was stripped and the aluminum treated for corrosion the primer was applied to help the paint adhere to the plane better next up was the base coat we chose a gray just so that the plane would be a little bit different than all the other [Applause] ones now came the fun part translating the design we wanted onto the plane we stopped by the shop about five or six times until the lines were just right there's after about six weeks the plane was ready to pick up plane just got out of the shop it's getting put back together after getting painted check it out so [Music] so now that she was looking better than ever it was time to bring her home [Music] uh [Music] the whole process took about a year from start to finish and after paint we had invested around 105 000 into the plane we put so much work and effort into restoring this old outdated bird and making it one of the most technologically advanced and beautiful archers on the ramp we were really proud of the work we did and even after we inevitably move on to a larger and faster plane this one will always be near and dear to our hearts fly safe y'all and as always we'll see you up there [Music] what are these switches do on these bows [Music] i want to

Channel: BroPilots

Views: 154,589

Keywords: pilot, aviation, piper, archer, airplanes, flight, restoration, airplane restoration, paint, airplane paint, avionics, garmin, glass panel, glass, avionics installation, garmin aviation gps, g3x, g3x touch, g3x touch certified, airplane restoration documentary, short field landing, short field takeoff, vintage airplanes

Id: EwcuBVlNbw8

Length: 7min 36sec (456 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020