I have had 3 of these. No, none of the problems you mention were the cause. For the wing dowels, I bought some oak doweling material at Lowes, and cut it to the right size and glued them into the wing. As I remember, the dowels that came with the ARF were not as strong material. On the fuse, I put in a piece of lite ply behind the bulkhead (on the fuel tank side) where the dowels go through and drilled the holes in it so that the dowels have the bulkhead, and the lite ply to fit into. I also used the sullivan tailwheel for the same reason as hockeyrules99. I put fiberglass cloth on the landing gear mount and epoxied it in place to strengthen the mount. I didn't move the servos to the tail, but if I ever make it to number 4 I probably would. I have an OS61FX for the powerplant, and had to add some lead to the tail for balance. I could have avoided this by putting the servos in the rear. Lastly, I took square balsa pieces...not triangle...although they would probably work as well, and epoxied them around the top of the block where the nylon wing mounting screws attach to the fuse. This added strength to the wing mounting block on the trailing edge of the wing. I really like flying this plane and put about a 1/2 gallon of fuel through it last weekend.