Bummer on the cowl Rick! What paint are you using? Is it the Lustercote Red? Or is it one of the Rustoleum Reds? But you know if you want to start over with the cowl you can get a brand new one at Fiberglass Specialties for about $65 including shipping. Then you can start over and get fresh paint. What I normally do is fill the sink with real hot water, then place the can of paint in the water for about 3 minutes, then I shake the can for another 2 minutes. That way when you spray the cowl it covers evenly and dries quicker so you can do light multiple coats.

Gloss paints I usually wet sand with 1000 or 2000 grit in between coats. I also wet sanded the ABS plastic piece on the middle wing when I used the Rustoleum Flat Black. That gave it a smooth flat black look. The cowl, I just sprayed it and left it at that. It smooths out over time the more I clean it.

Like I said I got my engine at Ebay. I guess down south and out west they have Ebay Drop Boxes or stores. I bid on it just before the bidding stopped. Normally a O.S.FS91S goes for quite a bit of money. A 1998 O.S. FS91IIS new in the box goes up to $350, and what's nice is most all the parts are still available, and some of the parts are compatible to the O.S.FS70.

Anyway, after I won the bid, I contacted the Ebay store and asked them some questions. They said the engine was dropped off by a older woman who said her husband died and had the engine in the original box among other things. Last she knew the engine ran. Because the engine sat for a while, and it was from Florida, the engine was seized with old glow gunk and tar. The valves didn't move, so I took the whole engine apart, cleaned all the pushrods, buckets and lower cam with acetone, sprayed it down with Liquid Wrench, then sprayed it with Heavy duty Silicone.

I took the pushrods out and polished them with Never-Dull. Then I put everything back together, adjusted the valves and filled the engine with Hobbico After Run Oil. I squirt some in the glow plug hole, Carb and some in the back to make sure the bearings got it, then I put the back plate back on.

I put in a new "F" glow plug, and it had a lot of compression. The feel told me that the engine wasn't used alot in the past but was broken-in, it had good valves, good bearings and a good piston and sleave. It had no gritty feeling in the bearings and very, very little rust residue inside.

When ebay sent me the engine, the high end needle was removed from its seat, and the adjustment spring was bent bad. But I had another new spring on hand from another old O.S. engine I once had and it matched.

In the video, that was the first time I fired up the engine since I bought it. So it was a little bit more than just a engine test in my Fokker DVII- it was more of, " will this engine run and am I out of $130?"

Ebay advertisement of the engine 1 year ago:







And when I was done with it:





I'm very glad the engine ran very well. I took a chance and made out OK.

Pete