Gene, a quote from me at age 10, "MOM, how come I have to learn everything the hard way" I don't remember the answer. I've found over my life that the hard way lesons seem to stick though.

About a year and a half back, I broke a O.S52 down to scrap metal and I salvaged the carb parts. I've got three Mag 52's, two have never been out ot the box, got them in the 1/2 off salethis spring from Hobby People, andthen my old troublesom Mag 52 that was on my trainer. It gave me fits and Hobby People sent me a new carb that worked great for about two tanks. I sent the engine to them and theydid a go over and it ran about the same when I got it back.Most all of my problemswere with the low end,if you cut the throttle full, it would quickly drop to about 3500 and then slowly dropdown to around 2500 and die. Icame across theO.S. 52 on ebay and bought it. Same bolt pattern on the mounts, and Ionly had to find a way to accomidate the carb as it wasquite different fromthe Mag 52. On a lark, Ichecked to see if I couldswap them andfound that they have the same bolt pattern where the attach to the back plate, and the fit to the manifold was exactly the same. Isince found out from W8ye that most of the exterior parts are interchangable, and some of the internal ones, on a like engine swap.When I crunched the O.S. 52, I made sure to keep parts although anything aluminum was broken or bent. I've got a second O.S. 52 in a little Fun Star and when I get around to the P-61, I'll pull it's carb and put it and the one I built up from parts from the crunched engine on the two Mag 52's I bought for that plane. For what is's worth, the old O.S. 52 carb and the Mag 52 carb will fit the new O.S. 56A engine. I picked up a vecolity stack for that engines carb and have it on my O.S. 52 in the fun Star. It sure keeps the firewall clean.

Let me know how it goes. Iknow what you mean about taking off the cowl and engine. That suoukoi SU -31 I bought has had the cowl/engine off at least 20 times since I got it a few weeks back. Isay Cowl/Engine as both have to come off and go on at the same time. And, I put 24 screws holding down the cowl. Man, do they hold. The last time out with it, Idead sticked on take off and nosed in, crunching the cowl and ripping out the landing gear mount. The attacment line of the cowl didn't move, nor were any of the screws jamed, even though most of them were into 1/16 balsa with some CAhinge pieces CAed to the back.

Don