Ed,
Thank you - I agree it may have been the conversion. The landing gear was incredibly soft, so the airplane rocked excessively during rollout and would dart one way or the other. Wheel landings were no problem at all until the tail came down. I've flown 150s with very soft gear - putting that on a tailwheel machine would not create a particularly nice handling airplane.
I've got a lot of time in Luscombes and instructed in them - they were all nicer handling than this particular conversion. I've also got a fair amount of time in the spring steel gear 180s and 185s, and none have had the unpleasant handling of the conversion.
In cruise, the 180 HP overwhelmed the airframe. I've flown big engine conversions of a number of airplanes, Riley Rockets, T-34s, turbo-prop P210, but none essentially "disharmonized" (for lack of a better word) the airplane the way this one did. Again, it may have been the conversion. And, it also helped convince me that if I'm going to buy any airplane, I am going to fly it through its entire envelope before I buy it. (I made the mistake of letting one of my co-owners do the acceptance flight on one airplane and we wound up with an airplane that cost us a few thousand dollars trying to fix a seriously out of rig condition due to a crappy wing rebuild - and neither the damage nor the rebuild were recorded in the logbook.)
Warmest regards,
Rick
