My plane is in need of paint. Done properly, the plane is partially disassembled and put back together. Now I’ve heard the horror stories of bad paint jobs, but aside from this, can rigging issues arise? Or is that a rare problem with professional shops?
Make sure the shop properly balances all control surfaces after stripping and repainting. The process should be described in the Maintenance Manual. Btw., when you talk about partially disassembled, I assume the wings stay connected to fuselage, i.e. no wing removal. In that case, the rigging might be an issue.
It depends who you are going to get to do the job, the cheap paint shops just rough up the current paint and spray the aircraft without removing anything.
A good shop will remove all the flying controls and totally strip the paint, when the controls go back on these should have had the balance checked. It is not unusual for aircraft to feel a little different after a re-paint, I suspect that this is due to the controls being put back to the factory settings following correction of minor defects that are discovered during the disassembly of the flying controls that will have been corrected before refitting.
I would expect to set aside some money to cover the replacement of minor items in the flying control system that the paint shop disassembly will find.
I can recommend Mick Allen at Turweston as a quality painter.
A_and_C wrote:
I can recommend Mick Allen at Turweston as a quality painter.
Is he still in business? His website (http://allenaircraftresprays.co.uk) is down and I can’t find any other one on Google.
I had heard on the grapevine Mick Allen was about to retire …….. but I can’t confirm this at the moment.
Mick Allen has been about to retire for the last 10 years…. The truth is that he is semi retiring with the business now effectively part of Akki Aviation (the maintenance organisation at Turweston) but it’s still there and very much still going. Mick might not be there every day (in theory!) but his boys are and Mick will be there when required to do his bit.
