cavelamb wrote:
Ground up rebuild (a beauty of a pun) is easy.
That's the way it's supposed to be done.
Experimental Amateur Built might take a good relationship with the local FIDO.
It has been done, but...

Get the book from FAA (Amateru Built Handbook) and take the 51% quiz for the
aircraft in question.
All those parts have to be "manufactured" too, you know.

There is a couple of guys around here that are (together) rebuilding a
Piper Malibu and placing it in the experimental-homebuilt category.
They have approval from the Florida FSDO for the work (apparently he
has approved a number of other similar rebuilds, and the plane was
located at the time in Florida - under water).

What they did was start with Piper. They got ahold of the production
process manual for the Malibu. It lists all the individual tasks that
must be done to manufacture the plane. They then worked out a list of
things they were going to do that covered 51% of that list. For
example, they are *making* (not buying) a wing skin section from
aluminum stock - they can then buy the rest of the skin sections they
need.

In they end they will by no means have manufactured 51% of the plane -
but they WILL have designed and manufactured parts covering 51% of the
tasks.

jmk