Island Flyer has turned into a great, fun flying machine

Island Flyer flying over the islands

A little over two years ago we completely rebuilt our 1993 Maule M-7 235 stripping everything down to bare tubes and started from the ground up.  I worked with Tim Boughner of Tim's Aircraft Repair and Restoration in Port Orchard, Washington.  The combination of my drive for trying to improve everything we put our hands on and Tim's expansive skill and knowledge base, we created what I have come to realize was the near perfect aircraft. I documented the whole process on a previous blog that can be found here: http://www.islandflyeradventures.com/Island%20Flyer%20Blog/Site_2/Blog/Blog.html
Unfortunately through the lack of support for the original blog format and the magic of the internet not all of the links in the blog work, but most do.

The plane has been a joy and has worked flawlessly.

Pt. Roberts, Washington

Red's Wallowa Horse Ranch, Oregon

Arlington Fly-in, Washington

Moose Creek Airstrip, Idaho

Shearer Airstrip, Idaho

Sullivan Lake, Washington

Instrument meteorologic conditions

Panel at full power

San Juan Islands at sunset

Over Eastern Washington

When we did the rebuild we cleaned up the engine but did not break the case apart. We took off the cylinders and did some honing.  The valve springs were changed and new valve covers were put on because of some corrosion.  We changed the magnetos and put in a new wiring harness with spark plugs.  The engine had 1465 hours on it and all of the parameters like compression and oil burn were good.  Visual inspection of everything we could see appeared to be in good working order. During the last two years it has run reliably and had the oil changed every 30 hours.  I now have 1810 hours on it.

Early in the summer while changing the oil I noticed some ferrous metal showing up in the oil filter.

I had been doing an oil analysis every oil change since I have had the plane and the previous oil analysis had shown all measures within a normal range.  This was the first time I had found any quantity of metal in the filter.  That wasn't such good news.