Piper Cub?

Has anyone here owned, or even flown a Piper Cub?

I was checking one out today for the first time and I was fascinated by their simplicity. I've known about them forever, but never got a close look before. This one was kind of a derelict, probably beyond restoration, or at least beyond any economically feasible restoration.  It's been more or less abandoned for years. In fact, there are a bunch of abandoned airplanes around here.

Has anyone repurposed a simple aircraft engine? I'm not talking about putting a Rolls Royce Merlin in a Hispano Suiza or anything, but what could you do with a salvaged air cooled Continental?

Put it in an airboat.  An aircraft engine without logs has a much less value than one with them (thanks Captain Obvious).  

I’d want one in my backyard just to look at. (If I didn’t live in a nice neighborhood, my yard would be Sanford & Son-esque so my opinion may not help)

I've worked on them and recovered them out of fields after emergency landings.

If it's got a data plate and an airworthiness certificate it can be rebuilt.

Wings will pop off with 4 bolts and a cotterpin. Rebuilding them might take a couple weekends if the spar is intact.

Cubs are the Honda Civic of airplanes. You can get anything for them fairly cheap (so far as airplane parts go.)

Cubs look freaking sweet when painted black.

Anything particular you want to know?

Woody said:

I'm not talking about putting a Rolls Royce Merlin in a Hispano Suiza or anything

Coward.

I vote 4 cylinder continental powered locost for the smallest aero engined roadster to date.

The Miata is the ground based Cub. Modified in every way you can imagine (and ways you can't.) Everyone and their Grandma makes parts. Its worth it. Restored J-3 Cubs are pushing $35,000 on Trade-a -Plane. If somehow you become involved, can you save me the Cub logo fabric? My Grandpa owned one of the last J-3s built. His was a 47 and Piper only built them until March of that year.

You can built hundreds of different kinds of homebuilts with a C-65.

I've flown a fair number of GA aircraft and the Cub was by and far the most fun. Literally just poking holes in the sky. Cruise the beach at basically a standstill and wave to everybody, land in the grass, fly with your arm out of the window.

That one is still savable.

Safest airplane in the world.

It can just barely kill you.

Cubs are worth good money and very collectable.  They also require re-covering occasionally, so torn or bad fabric is not that big of a deal.  The nice thing about a fabric plane is that you expose the entire structure when you take the fabric off so you can see/fix almost anything relatively easily.  Looks like the main spare has been exposed for a while, so that might be an issue.  

The motors in those are also very low HP (80?) so they would make for a very slow airboat.

If that is for sale, it is would likely not be hard to find someone who wants to buy and restore it.

Back in my day, I had two Piper Colts.  Very similar to the Cub, it had tricycle landing gear.  Loved it.  Slow, cheap to run and fun.

I loved my flying days. If I were in the spot to do it again, I'd jump back.

That's not junk, it's just waiting on you to love it ! 

Seriously, I've see far worse bring back to life. If all you need is a motor you can find one without the airframe

That's the most fun airplane that I've ever flown. When I was in A&P school in 1992-94 I worked for a guy here locally restoring them. 

Latch the window up and drop the door and it's like riding in a Jeep. And the traffic on the highway below will pass you.

Every man should hand prop an airplane at least once in their life too.

A Kitfox is on my want list.  I need to learn to fly first though.  LOL. 

My first time up was in a Cub.  I was a chubby kid and I remember the pilot mulling over whether or not I should go in the back or front.  I remember being astonished as the pilot’s wife picked up the tail and walked it around.  I thought she must have been the strongest woman in the world as in my mind the plane would have been about the same weight as a car.  65 hp and 700 lbs. they told me.  Those numbers got burned into my brain cells forever for some reason.

yes, if flying single, you sit in the back seat to balance it. They are that light that even a minor amount of weight transfer can alter their flight characteristics

Speaking in generalities here- aircraft motors are not designed to run with major transients- so you would have a tough time to make one work in a car.  IIRC, those have manual spark control via the magnetos and manual mixture control for the carbs- which is difficult to work on a car.

My first experience flying was in a Cub in the 50’s. I was sitting on my Dads lap. The pilot was a friend of my crazy uncle who with his friends were always doing “something cool”. Even as a small kid I remember how slow we flew over the farms and actually seeing my grandfather waving as we circled the farm.

Did all my primary training in J3 Cubs and an ex-Navy L4 model.  They're are loads of fun.  Got to fly 'backwards' over the field in slow flight on a windy day.  Got to fly the L4 on ski's.  Taxiing and landing on snow requires the tail to be up, so you're flying it on the ground.  Landing creates a big puff of snow over the aircraft.  They had to be hand propped to get them started.  Those were the days!

Apparently, the L4 (N1141V) is still available to rent at North Hampton airfield in New Hampshire!

Did my flight review in one once when the airplane I owned at the time was in the shop, just for fun.

It was a fancy one with a fuel injected engine and maybe 80 hp.

I'll have you know that we climbed to altitudes of [sarcasm on] over 4000 ft [sarcasm off] (Kansas, ground level was ~1500) and once at that altitude we initiated a spin, and during the recovery, pointed straight down, we we going [sarcasm on again] over 90 mph indicated! [sarcasm off]

Had a guy who flew one pretty regularly where we live now.  I'd characterize his choice of altitude for cross county work as "a little too high to plow".