Restoration of N81363, s/n R46263, a Fairchild 24R46 w/ a 200 HP Ranger engine.

In Feb 2001 a partially restored Fairchild 24 arrives at SAS for completion.

There is plenty of work to be done in this cockpit.

After removing the entire firewall forward assembly, all external engine components have been removed, restored (or replaced), repainted, and reassembled. This includes the engine itself. In these photos (above) the assembly in just about ready to be put back on the firewall.

A replacement nose bowl has been fitted because the propeller is to be changed back to a fixed pitch wooden propeller and that requires a different size shaft opening in the nose bowl. The photo (above, left) shows the result of the new nose bowl fitting and refitting the cowling. The wheel pants have also been restored. There is a coat of primer on the finished work. The photo (above, right) shows the restored step liners. 

New avionics have been purchased and a wiring harness is currently being made. In the interest of safe and comfortable cross country flying, modern instruments and avionics are being installed. The instrument panel has a full suite of gyroscopic instruments. The avionics will include a VFR GPS, a Nav/Com with built in VOR indicator, a second Com, transponder, clock, and a four place intercom with headphone jacks. For maintenance and log purposes, an engine hour meter activated off of engine oil pressure will also be installed. Custom panels will be fabricated for the avionics. The fuses are being replace with circuit breakers and an additional ten circuit breakers will be added to the passenger panel to support the additional avionics and to allow better isolation of the electrical system elements. We are planning to replace the cockpit activated fuel drain with an externally activated fuel drain fitting to allow normal preflight inspection of the fuel being drained. The next restoration step is to rebuild the cockpit doors.

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Last updated on August 31, 2004