Airtex Interior Refurbishment - Day 51

Day 51 (Diversions)

As part of the wall panel installation, there were several small
subprojects that needed to be done. Some things were necessary to "clean
up" previous sloppy or failing installations. Others were needed because
the new walls were not made exactly like the old ones. Still other
projects were necessary to spruce up some elements not strictly covered
by the Airtex materials.

An example of clean up work is the wiring added when the rear seat
intercoms were installed and radios were installed and removed over the
years. Rather than using the established wiring channels on the left
side of the cockpit, someone simply stuffed the wiring between the wall
panels and the wall supports on the right side of the plane. With the
old thin cardboard walls and dark blue carpet, this was O.K. because it
was not noticeable. With the new stiff walls and light gray carpet, this
stuff needed to be better secured and arranged so it would lay flatter.

An example of new vs. old came when I saw that the new pockets on the
new walls were placed right where the ELT remote switch and one metal
placard were mounted on the old walls. Relocation of this stuff may not
be simple. For example, you need to have enough slack wire to move the
switch somewhere else. Also, you need to be sure you don't relocate
things so that the mounting hardware will pierce a wiring bundle. When
you do buy new hardware to attach things to the wall panels, remember
that the new walls are thicker than the old ones. So, you need much
longer screws to make it all the way through.

Lastly, things that will look very badly out of place like the armrests
need to be handled. The armrests turned out to be deceptively complex.
Yes, the good folks at Airtex send you 2 pieces of upholstery and
padding (vinyl, velour, or whatever matches your walls), however the
rest of the part may not work for your plane. For example, the basic
Piper armrest is out of some 70's car. So it is a cheesy chrome plated
plastic affair with "style" lines in it. To add to the cheap Disco look,
mine had chrome pieces peeling off. Finally, the icing on the cake is
that they both have cute little chrome ashtrays in them. My solution to
these problems was to cover the chrome with upholstery, remove the
ashtrays, and extend the top pad to cover the ashtray hole. This
required making 2 new pieces of ¼ inch plywood long enough to cover the
entire top of the armrest. I installed a couple of "t-nuts" in the wood
pieces to hold 2 new machine screws I would use in the old hole
locations of the base armrest unit. That is the easy part. One
difficulty is in covering the chrome. There are many complex surfaces
and curves requiring lots of little cuts and snips to get it to look
right. If you try to use vinyl or the Airtex base materials, I wish you
luck. I have silver gray velour on that part of the walls and I cannot
think of any other material you could pull this off with.

To do the job, I brushed on contact cement to the chrome surfaces, up
around and into the top surfaces, and around the back of the units where
they will be mounted to the walls. You can make all the seams on the
bottom so nothing "rough" shows. Again, velour is pretty forgiving
because the nap covers small imperfections. You have to get the contact
cement at just the right point in its drying stage for it to hold
together while you are assembling it and still allowing some
repositioning. The top pad is a challenge because the radius of all the
curves is so small. The original Piper vinyl was very thin and
stretchable, while modern materials are quite a bit more robust. At
first I thought I would be able to just have the contact cement hold the
vinyl in place. I quickly discovered I needed much more holding power.
So, the electric stapler loaded with ¼ inch staples was called upon. In
the end, it came out great, but it took about 2 hours to do the whole
armrest job. I repositioned the ELT remote switch using new hardware.
The original installer used mismatched screws into the cardboard after
piercing the switch backplate in mostly the wrong places. I redrilled
new holes and used #1 screws with 80 threads per inch and matching nuts.
This is SMALL stuff. Get extras because you will drop more than one nut
and NEVER find them! I originally intended on replacing the "pin and
push-on clip" hardware for the metal placard, but I saw that my local
ACE hardware had these clips. So, I just bought new ones and tried to
reuse the pins. Well, I did not notice how short the pins were (did not
take my own advice above about the panel thickness requiring longer
hardware). So, it is back to the hardware store for more tiny screws.

End of Day 51.