I had an old version of the Super Sportster 60 I bought in 1986 and finally put it together 17 years later. I covered it in Super Coverite and it came in over 10 lbs. with about a pound of lead in the nose for balance. It still flew great with a Magnum ringed 61, though. I also installed a Magnum 75 abc and it was even faster. The firewall became loose after several years of flying and I pulled all the covering off and had a lot of fuel damage to the wood. I used cornstarch and heat to get most of the oil out of the wood. I then used epoxy to re-glue the front end back together. Mine had very heavy wood in the tail feathers, so I drilled lightening holes in all the tail surfaces to lighten them up. I recovered it with monokote and ultracote combination and removed all the lead from the nose. I had come into possesion of a new/old O.S. 61 fsr abc with the 3 needle valve pattern carb on it that I installed in the new version. This combination proved to be a real hot rod. The plane weighed over 2 lbs lighter and was a joy to fly. Another mod I did was to move the main gear just ahead of the wing, which was one of the better mods I did to this plane. The wing mounted landing gear were not very sturdy, especially when flying off grass.
I would suggest checking the wood for the tail feathers before assembling to make sure it is not too heavy. I also have one of the newly released kits and noticed one change immediately that I like. They replaced the vertical grain fuse doublers with 1/8" lite ply. I think this will be even stronger in this area. I plan to build the new kit when I get a chance so I can have another SS60 in my stable for when I get the "need for speed" at the field.
Here are pics of the two versions. The yellow was the Coverite and the John Deere was Mono/ Ultracote.
Unfortunately, this plane met its demise when I got it into a flat spin too close to the ground and could not recover in time.