Following my welding repair of yesterday and a thirty minute flight I'm feeling like I might have a fix on my spinner. I'm going to try and add some photos with a bit of narrative. In December at the annual we discovered a 2-3 crack in the spinner. Being pretty new as a solo owner and a new man in a new land (new hanger, new plane and new mechanic) I had it repaired by a fellow recommended by my mechanic. (Pic 1) It came back looking great and I painted it up and installed it. Started flying once the annual was completed in about March as I needed a new carburetor and it took about 6 weeks to get it shipped out. Things went well for about 7 hours of flight time over a couple of months. During a preflight I found that section of the spinner at the repair site had departed during flight. (Pic 2) Discouraged by the "welded" repair earlier I talked with my mechanic and he and I agreed that I could try a couple of epoxy adhesives with a replacement section and a shaped backing plate behind it adding a counter weight to the balance it out. I also added a 1" wide aluminum belt to circumnavigate the entire base of the spinner. (Pic 3 and 4) This worked pretty well but after a couple of flight hours it was apparent that the adhesive repair had a limited life expectancy and while certain that the belt would keep the repair piece from departing it was going to cause problems in micro movement and eliminate any expectation of a pretty paint job. (Pic 5) At this point and having some skill in welding, I was going all in on this spinner, and weld it myself. I have a welder set up with aluminum MIG and so I practiced on some 0.050" aluminum until I thought I was close and welded it up. Too make a long story short I build up the repair with multiple short beads that didn't look like much but as I ground them down and widened the repair area I was careful not to remove too much material from my repair. You will note in (Pic 6) the repair was not feathered completely into the adjoining unwelded area as I wanted to bulk up the thickness and width at the repair site. The material in the spinner is just to thin to grind away with confidence. Pic (7) is a good photo of the "finished" repair with the aluminum belt in place. I'm going to fly it for at least 10 hours now before I get back to repainting it. Or more likely wait until the next annual in March. I did use epoxy between the belt and the spinner mostly just to make disassembly less of a hassle. This is Dale Larsen's airplane and has the Lycoming 0-360 with a Power-flow exhaust. It is a hoot to fly. Dale took really good care of it for 23 years. My mechanic told me several times that I have myself "a nice airplane". The spinner is obviously not stock. Photos (7 and 8) are of the numbers inscribed inside of the spinner indicating the company, the FAA-PMA STC SA750 CE and the part numbers from the spinner AVCON C-150 15012-5. I would gladly purchase a spare spinner if anyone in the club should come across one. Thanks for all Raymond
