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Mixture control and grove brakes

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nwetzler

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2012
Messages
120
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3
Hello all you wonderful cub geniuses! I recently had to take my cub in for maintenance at an alternative A&P at one of the "bigger" local airports. I needed brakes, and during my last 2 flights I've had a "rough" mag drop on the L mag during run-up. No detectable difference in performance otherwise. My A&P was unavailable, and I have a moderately important event this Sunday, so a quick turn around was important, and because of this I took my 47 J-3 to the aforementioned A&P at the advice of my uncle. While awaiting news, I got a text message from my uncle saying "stopped in to check on your plane today, they are just trying to do everything by the book, hope you're ok with that and that you get everything sorted out". Keeping in mind that I've yet to get any word from them prior to this, you may be able to relate to the instant "oh shit" reaction I had. Turns out, the A&P is insistent that I should upgrade to grove brakes (from original hydraulics), and add a mixture control to my NAS3A1. Now, I'm about as far from an expert on Cubs as you can get, but I just don't see the point. For the 60+. Years my family has owned this cub, we've never needed either, so why do I now? Also, with reference to the mixture control, I. pretty certain I've read/been told that would be a waste of time, and that the carb is ALWAYS wired full rich. When I stopped in to check on things, the main A&P wasn't there, but his partner was, and although he did not outright dismiss my objection, he said "in every cub I've restored, we've installed mixture control". I immediately pointed out that he's not "restoring" my cub, and that to my knowledge, the mixture control is only relevant when talking about marvel carbs, not my stromberg. Just to give a little background, this cub is 100% original A65-8, no electric, stromberg carb, etc. So to get to the point, I'd like to be able to come back to him with some actual technical explanation of why, at the very least the mixture control makes no sense. As far as the brakes are concerned, I'm satisfied with the explanation that 1: they've been sufficient since 1947, and 2: I don't have the $ to tackle "optional" upgrades. Any help is greatly appreciated, sorry for the minimal info, just don't want to make it more complicated than it needs to be!
 
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