"Where are the other two cylinders?" was a question some of the uninitiated asked as they looked over Tom Trainor’s Model K at this year’s Aeronca Convention in Middletown. "That’s a real rare one," said an obviously better informed admirer, noting that only about 360 Model K’s were built by Aeronca in the 30’s while they were still at Lunken Airport. The story of how Tom wound up with the K – now sporting a beautiful and original shade of Leoning yellow with black trim – is just about as unusual as the airplane itself.

Tom said that back in the early 1950s, he was flying a C-3 Aeronca that also had a two-cylinder Aeronca engine on it. He needed some engine parts and learned that a man named Houseman, living in Wayland, Michigan, had plenty of parts – in fact plenty of airplanes, specifically Aeronca K models.

Houseman, it turns out, had bought out the stock of Aeronca K engines in the late 40s or early 50s, some years after the company had discontinued making the E113 series engines and was no longer legally obligated to provide parts. Tom said, "When I went there to buy the engine parts, he offered to sell me all the parts he had at a reasonable price."

In the early 1970s he restored one of the Ks and, after flying it for seven years, sold it – and everything else he had left – to Andy Anderson in Missouri.

About 1987, after retiring from Chrysler and from teaching industrial arts, Tom got a call from an out-of-state man who said he had an old Aeronca K that Tom had owned at one time and wondered if Tom would like to buy it back. "My son, Todd, said, ‘Let’s buy it’ and he said he’d help restore it."

"When I went to re-register it with the FAA, I found out it was still in my name. Of the four owners who’d had it over the years none had ever bothered to register it in their names. " Tom said that this isn’t too unusual. When he first bought the six K models from Houseman, non were registered in Houseman’s name.

Restoration began about 1987 with some help from his son until he went off to college. Tom said he rebuild all the wing ribs, as well as replacing all wood stringers and bulkheads. He explained that the wing ribs were "put together with fishpaper for gussets rather than the plywood now used." And, of course, the casein glue that was used years ago was replaced by an epoxy adhesive.

The K’s tubular fuselage structure was in good shape, but to avoid possible internal rust problems he used a sound technique of coating the inside of the fuselage tubing. He sandblasted the outside, checked the welds, primed it and painted it with an epoxy resin. "This adds weight but I think it’s worth it in this regard."

The exterior paint job is in the original colors and design. He was happy to find the brown crackle paint for the instrument panel. "Aeronca did all their K instrument panels in brown crackle. I looked everywhere for the brown color in crackle paint until I went to a store that handled Kennedy tool boxes which are finished in brown crackle. They sell the paint in spray cans for touch ups."

Until very recently, Tom’s K sported an original E-113C engine. A few weeks ago he decided to introduced his K to a new engine for slightly more owner, one of the last ever made by Aeronca and the most advanced at the time. Aeronca had been using the Aeronca E-113 series engine in the C-3 model and in 1937 designated their new "K" model to use the same engine. At the same time Continental had come out with their 40-hp four cylinder engine which was proving to be popular and reliable. Aeronca could buy this engine for less than it cost them to build their own engine, so the K was designed, with minor modifications to the landing gear and wings, to use the Continental and other engines as soon as the Aeronca E-113 series engines were used up. These planes became the "KC", "KL", and "KM" models depending on whether a Continental, Lycoming or Menasco engine was used. Then, with only slightly more modifications to accept the new 50-hp engines, the first Aeronca Chief models came out in late 1938.

The company also knew that they could not sell the E-113 series engines with single ignition after 1941, so they designed a dual ignition conversion for their Aeronca engine. Toward the end of production, Aeronca came up with an overhead oiling systems. Up until this time the only lubrication to the upper cylinder head was by grease gun and top oil. The other major modifications to the E-113 series Aeronca engine was to spline the crankshaft in an attempt to reduce crankshaft breakage that was caused by neglecting to lap the tapered shaft and prop hub together for a perfect fit. All of these modifications have been incorporated in Tom’s engine, which was one of the last Aeronca engines built. It still has 113 cubic-inch displacement, but with all the modifications it was given a new ATC of 189 and the engine was designated as an E-113 CBD with a rated maximum horsepower of 45.