The International Cessna^® 170 Association

I am sure I already know the answer, but I am just lazy enough to ask. My new purchase has about 30 years of dirt in the wings from living outside and not being properly maintained. The dirt does not simply come off. It has turned to something resembling adobe....
So my question is has anybody ever ran a garden hose in their wings to wash out the dirt or at least soften it up? It is mostly in the outside bay, and I was wondering if I tilted the airplane so that the wing would drain out if this would be okay? Any thoughts or hopefully experience with this would be greatly appreciated!!

After I gave my 170 a bath it had silt in the wings. I rinsed the begeesus out of them while they where off with fresh water got it all out I think.

mit wrote:After I gave my 170 a bath it had silt in the wings. I rinsed the begeesus out of them while they where off with fresh water got it all out I think.

So your wings were off of the plane when you washed them out? I was figuring on using DI water, but just unsure about squirting water in them.

Yes the wings were off I fliped them around and shook them while I was rinsing.

I have rinsed the inside of my wings while they were on the airplane, but it was during the summer. I had all the inspection covers off and left them off until everything was well dried out. It was pretty hot around here at that time so it didn't take very long. The wing tips were also removed as the wash job was in preparation for spraying the interior of the wings with an anti corrosion agent.

I've washed mud dauber nests out and then went out and flew it for a couple hours in the sun.

Thanks for the comments, it gets 120 here in the summer, so I believe I will wait for it to get warm and then do it.

I've never done it before, but I think a guy could adapt the wand from a garden type chemical sprayer, preferrably a copper tube wand so you could bend it to spray 90 degrees. Then the wand could be adapted to a length of PVC and the PVC adapted to the garden hose. You could run the PVC/wand assembly down thru the lightning holes, with the tip off of course, and rotate it as you go.