Wood Spar HELP

[bookmaker]

My 65 Citabria is in for annual and today, my A & P and I may have found a compression crack in the forward spar. My A & P is not real comfortable with the wood spar Citabrias and is not really excited about doing more exploring to see if it is really a crack or some other mark.

Does anyone know if there is someone who is familiar with inspecting Citabria wings who is in the South East Alabama area? If we can find someone to look at this it would be a great relief.

Thanks,

Dale
ps: at this point my plane does not have the upper side inspection ports.

 

[jvannes]

Do you have inspection holes on top of the wing? You can contact Rainbow Aviation in WA. Ron has helped me a lot and he sales the upper inspection covers and he can send you pictures of cracked spars. James

 

[bookmaker]

Thanks for the info James. At the present, the upper inspection windows do not exist, however I ordered kits for them from ACA and they will arrive today.

I have contacted a local area A&P who has considerable experience with wood structures and has done a Citabria spar inspection. The plan is that once we get the inspection windows cut into the top, my A & P and I will look at the spars. If we are convinced what we see, we will continue accordingly. If we still have questions, we will call in the "wood expert" to take a look. The expert however was not interested in looking at it without the top wing inspection windows as he feels it is too difficult to determine what you are seeing.

He told me that the inspection he had done was due to a suspected crack. He examined it and determined it to be a ridge in the varnish that was catching dirt and overspray. Saved the owner a lot of money. Sure hope mine works that way. :shock:

Dale