I am fairly new to rc airplanes, I have built guillows balsa models before and I am looking to build one of the "private planes" models such as a cessna 170 and install electric rc gear in it. I was wondering if anyone has done this with a guillows balsa model before and if it worked well. Thanks for any tips/advice.

Welcome to RCUniverse!

Depending on which Guillows kit you're talking about, it may or may not make a good conversion. Many Guillows kits, especially the very small ones and very large ones, are far too heavy for their sizes to make good R/C conversions. They're overbuilt, and the balsa they use in the die-cutting process is far too heavy.

*Edited for a senior moment*

Im thinking of either the cessna 170 or piper cub. I heard that these are too heavy to fly, I was just wondering if anyone had done it before.

As I said, Guillows makes a few different sizes of those models.

If you replace all the wood, and lighten the structure signifigantly, an R/C conversion should certainly be possible.

Don't do it as your first electric, save it for later. For your first build something that is set up to fly well at the right wing loading. Look at Mountain Models for some good kits. Dumas also makes some reasonable conversions, but Mountain Models are built from the ground up to fly electric RC well.