Skymaster Forum - Shiny on the Outside

Interesting story,
Six months ago a friend & I flew a 337G approx 1000 nm to deliver to an aquaintance who had just bought it. I saw it for the first time since then yesterday and was stunned at the amount of corrosion now visible around the boom joint just behind the flap trailing edge. We are talking serious corrosion in that I could put a thin object thru to the inside of the boom. There was also other areas of bubbling paint visible. Now I want to be careful here so that I don't offend anyone here in Oz but looking back the clues were there at the time of purchase.
* Ex coastal town
* Original paint with bare skin showing in places
* For those in Oz it is Alby Mengels old plane
* Obvious surface corrosion but didn't look too serious
* Lots of other small signs that in hindsight indicated serious
structural damage ... too many to list here
Given the thickness of the material around this area and the extent of the damage I wouldn't be surprised if we are talking replacement booms here

I must also point out that this aircraft flew beautifully when ferried back hence my statement that "I was stunned" to see the damage appearing 7 months later. Having said all of this you must also be aware that a LAME did look the a/c over pre purchase and even did some pre ferry work on it so in general a reasonable amount of pre buy homework was done at the time.

So in summary a bit of shiny new paint can fool some of the people some of the time when your heart is set on a new toy.

I really do share in the disappointment of the new owners ..........Wayne