Frank, not sure about the book writing and I am sure there are just as many other guys around with great stories.
But Oh boy, all that stuff you talked about, it still was sitting around in the back of my mind, which I thought I had forgotten about.
Yep, those gear boxes and cranks, had everyone, me included, flying around just waiting for the bang.
I also welded up an early 503 exhaust several times, I tried beefing up the exhaust mounting plates each time thinking it can't crack now. It was not until I also redesign the mount to take the vibration that we stopped the cracking. My mounting was not so pretty compared to the later offering from Austflight, but it did the job.
Boy you remember everything Frank, those spark plug caps, yet another reason to make you feel the engine was about to stop when it started to miss from this, never stop our engine, but a lead did come off once. I learnt very fast to very gently damaging the thread on new spark plugs so when these caps were screwed up tight they would bind into damage thread area and never came loose.
What about those small rectangular impulse fuel pumps sitting right up against the side of the 503 block, one day this pump just started to cause grief to the owner of this early drifter.
We thought it must be from wear, so it was replaced with new. All was happy until a mild hot day out in the mulga and the motor stopped. Once back on the ground the fuel bowl was found full and the engine fired into life like a happy little beaver. Some more ground running, but nothing, so back into the air again and then after a while it stopped and back on the ground to find the bowl full. Back up in the air again, but this time as the motor start to died, the drifter was put into a climb so the prop stopped against the engine compression so not windmill gliding back down, this time little fuel was in the bowl.
So off came the fuel pump to be remounted away from the engine block so it had less heat and possible vaporization, this seemed to work. But it would have been better to also add an electric fuel pump, but at the time with this Drifter did not have any electrical or charging system, so this was not an option until a crude electrical rectifier came available from Austflight some time later that could also run some radios.
This early drifter had a pull start on the motor and you had a choke leveler on the carburetor. The choke and pull start had not found their way up to the pilot's seat at this stage
Cheers
Jim188