Here are some pictures.

The first is the engine/motor mount sitting on the "die cut" piece of firewall that was punched out. The motor mount bolts were removed during disection.

The second picture shows the insides after I've removed some of the remaining firewall at the start of the repairs. Notice the foam on the inside top? The foam shapes the top of the fuselage and is sheeted with balsa that's about the thickness of the red covering that's "hiding" it. There isn't anything else up there that supports the top of the firewall or connects it back into the fuselage. The two horizontal pieces up there that stick out into the open hole look like they are missing the middle part, right? There isn't any middle part. They're the heaviest supports for the top part of the firewall. The top of the firewall is basically just freestanding as far as secondary bracing is concerned. BTW, that's the cowling in the lower left of the picture. If you've assembled one of these and wonder that the 4 cowling blocks in the picture look a bit different than you had, I added the plywood to overlap onto the fuselage sides. That insures that the blocks don't fail at the buttglue joint and increase the gluing surface.

The third picture shows the firewall piece along the "die cut" line at the top. Sorry for the blurry picture, but I took these pictures for my records and they're good enough for that. If you look hard, you can see the 5 of the 6 wood layers. From the bottom, there is a light layer, a slightly darker layer, another light layer (those three make up the forward most piece of "plywood"), another light layer that's hidden somewhat by shiny stuff that's the glue used to sandwich the two "thick" pieces of "plywood" together, and then a very dark layer, and the 6th and final layer which is light.

Notice the T-nuts protrude through the firewall. That gives an indication of how thick it was. It often happens, and is not an indictment except that this firewall isn't strong enough plywood to get by with being that thin.

BTW, I'm NOT ticked off. Nor am I angry or actually even excited about this. This is SOP for ARFs. We better get used to it. However, I'm posting this thread to inform "us" ARF users who might buy the thing in the future AND in hopes the retailers over here will hear about this thread. It's the retailers who need to QC what they sell to us. And it's way too easy for them to blow off communications to just one or two "disgruntled" customers.