Flying Wires

One of the first projects after getting it home was to evaluate the condition of the flying wires. I counted them up and it appeared that they were all there. However it looked like they had been stored against a piece of steel that had rusted. They were all dirty and rust colored, I was lucky that someone had converted to stainless steel MacWhite wires so I figured they would clean up OK. Here are a few shots of the wires as received.

I was a little worried about these and how they would clean up. There are a lot of wires on a Jungmann and some of them are of unusual configuration with extra long threaded sections . I would guess these would be close to $4000  to replace today. None of the threaded ends appeared to be damaged and the AN 665 terminals though a little rusty came off easy.

I used this method to clean these up. I took a piece of 2 inch PVC pipe the length of the longest wire, and I capped one end. I inserted the wires without the end fittings then filled the tube with carburetor cleaner. I let them soak about 30 minutes, removed them and scrubbed them down with the finest scotch brite pad available. I really did not need to scrub much as the stain came right off. I then used a soft brass brush on the threads and finished with a through fresh water wash. Here you can just see the tube and my wash rack.

They came out fantastic, they look brand new.

 
You can see the unusual wires at the bottom with the round section and a streamline section. Looks like a special order from Bruntons !

I'm not sure if these are tail wires or the aileron interconnect wires, you can see the long threaded section on the top two. Here is a shot of the wash rack.

I let these dry over night then I sprayed and wiped them down with LPS2 . I grouped them by size and stored them in cheap pvc pipe so I do not have to clean these again. I am still searching for all the end fittings and trying to figure out what has been drilled out English and what's still metric.
Overall the wires are in fantastic shape , with no nicks, pitting or damage. With a light polish after installation, they will look fantastic.