Portfolio

• Paint Lead: Bob Bowers
• Project Mechanical Lead: Russ Winstanley.
• Paint scheme by Scheme Designers.
• Colours: Three
  • Jet Glo Express Matterhorn White
  • PPG FBC Red
  • Acry Glo Black
  • Acry Glo Dusk Grey
• Full Strip and Paint

COMMENTS / DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Cessna 421C Paint plus Structural Repairs:

This AC came us us as a referral from Gary at Corporate Air Center out of Skagit Regional Airport.  We had painted twin otters that Gary worked on while he was up North.  Thank you for the referral Gary!

This aircraft was purchased by the client who put in the sweet RAM conversion on the plane.  He then scheduled the paint at our shop for paint back in February.  The aircraft arrived, schemes were made.  Upon disassembly the project was going on without a hitch.  We masked and applied stripper like all our other paint jobs.  Once the bulk of the paint had been chemically removed our crew began the hand-stripping and cleaning section of the job.

This is where this typical paint job started to go off the rails.  At UVA our paint staff are trained to recognize anything in the metal, composite, fiberglass, carbon etc. that doesn’t look right.  They are trained to flag suspicious items for evaluation by our structural engineers.  The painters flagged a couple areas that looked that lots of filler (bondo) had been applied.  Upon inspection and removal some of these areas appeared to have 1/4″ think filler.

Upon further inspection and removal of the bondo we found three areas that had some serious looking damage that required further investigation via NDT for skin thickness.  In some of the questionable areas 90% of skin thickness had been previously removed and filled over.  Upon discussions with Cessna Engineering and in coordination with Corporate Air Center we determined that engineered repairs were required from Cessna who stated unconditionally that the AC was unsafe in it’s current condition.

Int the end all repairs were carried out and the client now has a safer and more reliable AC.  Russ Winstanley did an excellent job in executing the repairs for our client.

The paint work turned out beautifully thanks to Bob.