UPDATE: I straightened the shaft on the motor, used foam safe CA and glued the firewall back on, cut some small balsa strips to re attach the nose gear. and we went to the field. just after take off the left wing buckled and the plane pulled a digger. bending the already weakened shaft into a 90 breaking the prop.

not giving up on it, I decided it was time to "fix" it up. I had a 3/16 wooden dowel laying around, and courtesy of an expired multiplex twinstar, I had a permax 400 motor. I used packing tape to secure the dowel about 1/2 behind the leading edge of the wing just before where the wing strut screws in. the motor is a perfect fit in the motor mount, I just had to solder the wires. I stoped by my LHS and picked up a prop adaptor that was a little longer so I could run aftermarket props. I went with a MAS 7x4. after secureing everything and doing a control check it was time to see if the little plane would fly.
It does!!!! it actually flies really well. the climb rate is slow using the stock battery but it is very controllable. I noticed the connectors flyzone uses for the battery are the same as eflight uses for there helicopters. so I thought I'd see if the esc would stand up to a 3s lipo. I put a small strip of velcro inside the battery box so I could secure the lipo pack from my blade cp. I powered up the plane and everything seemed ok so I decided to give it a test flight to see if the lipo made much of a difference. it does, the top speed wasn't really much faster but the climb rate is notacibly different. I think it's probably the weight difference, but with the lipo the plane climbs really well. I managed to pull a few loops and some pretty heavy dives and the plane took it with out any problems. I brought it in for a nice landing on the track. I did three more short flights with it on the same battery each time doing a rolling take off and landing. I'm having dirty thoughts of installing an brushless inrunner just for fun. but as it sits now the plane flys good.