M-4 Rebuild Project - Seat/Seat-Belt Brackets Installation
Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2023 12:16 pm
Hey Ya'll!
I have a couple of questions... & hoping some of you very experienced Maule people have the answer! Currently, I am working on the fuselage of the M-4 getting it all ready for when the interior returns from Oregon Aero & for the avionics rewire. I removed every single wire out of the plane & plan to start from scratch!
1. One of my big items on this aircraft was to replace the front bench seat with two bucket seats. I was able to find someone willing to sell me an old pair of M5 seats and those are the ones I shipped out to get reupholstered. I spoke with several people at Maule including Bruce and David, making sure this was in fact possible on my #56. They helped me put together a parts list of the brackets...ect. that I would need to accomplish this.
I am having a hard time figuring out where exactly these brackets need to be welded in. I am assuming I need to remove the old bench-seat seat lock and will need to weld in two separate seat locks for the bucket seats. They only sent me one seat lock and I have another one coming. I have looked through all of the M-4 parts catalog and diagrams and can't find anything about the installation of these brackets and such. I threw in a couple pictures below of the parts I was sent and the current status of my M-4.
2. With this, I am also working on replacing my old floorboards. Currently they are thick 3-ply plywood with black closed-cell foam on the back. Not sure if the foam backing is what people are regularly doing now and if I should do something similar on my new ones...? I ended up purchasing 5-ply Marine grade Okoume and can already tell it is a lot lighter.
My question with this is how are the floor boards suppose to be secured down? I have seen from other people's post & per the floor board tab assembly drawing #1146F, there appears to be (9) AN3-5A bolts. Is there something else I need to weld in for these bolt to attach to? My plan is to leave it the natural wood look and not replace any type of carpeting... but obviously I need these secured down.
3. Lastly, I removed the old headliner & plan to replace it with a new one I got from Aircraft Spruce once the rewiring is finished. However, I am unsure what I should do about the old original insulation.I have seen a lot of talk about how it can lead to corrosion. I do already see some rusting on the upper tubing... I am trying to figure out if I should remove the old insulation and replace it with new insulation or leave insulation out all together? If replace... what is the best insulation for this? The previous owner who started this project had purchased the black closed-cell insulation and placed that all along the side paneling as you can see from the pictures... Not sure of that would be a good replacement or just some new fiberglass insulation. I will be having my family including my young son flying in this plane. We live in Michigan where the winters can be cold... so keeping the cabin as warm as I can is definitely a priority.
Thank you in advance to whoever took the time to read my post! This has already been such a great aviation community to be apart of!
Thea
I have a couple of questions... & hoping some of you very experienced Maule people have the answer! Currently, I am working on the fuselage of the M-4 getting it all ready for when the interior returns from Oregon Aero & for the avionics rewire. I removed every single wire out of the plane & plan to start from scratch!
1. One of my big items on this aircraft was to replace the front bench seat with two bucket seats. I was able to find someone willing to sell me an old pair of M5 seats and those are the ones I shipped out to get reupholstered. I spoke with several people at Maule including Bruce and David, making sure this was in fact possible on my #56. They helped me put together a parts list of the brackets...ect. that I would need to accomplish this.
I am having a hard time figuring out where exactly these brackets need to be welded in. I am assuming I need to remove the old bench-seat seat lock and will need to weld in two separate seat locks for the bucket seats. They only sent me one seat lock and I have another one coming. I have looked through all of the M-4 parts catalog and diagrams and can't find anything about the installation of these brackets and such. I threw in a couple pictures below of the parts I was sent and the current status of my M-4.
2. With this, I am also working on replacing my old floorboards. Currently they are thick 3-ply plywood with black closed-cell foam on the back. Not sure if the foam backing is what people are regularly doing now and if I should do something similar on my new ones...? I ended up purchasing 5-ply Marine grade Okoume and can already tell it is a lot lighter.
My question with this is how are the floor boards suppose to be secured down? I have seen from other people's post & per the floor board tab assembly drawing #1146F, there appears to be (9) AN3-5A bolts. Is there something else I need to weld in for these bolt to attach to? My plan is to leave it the natural wood look and not replace any type of carpeting... but obviously I need these secured down.
3. Lastly, I removed the old headliner & plan to replace it with a new one I got from Aircraft Spruce once the rewiring is finished. However, I am unsure what I should do about the old original insulation.I have seen a lot of talk about how it can lead to corrosion. I do already see some rusting on the upper tubing... I am trying to figure out if I should remove the old insulation and replace it with new insulation or leave insulation out all together? If replace... what is the best insulation for this? The previous owner who started this project had purchased the black closed-cell insulation and placed that all along the side paneling as you can see from the pictures... Not sure of that would be a good replacement or just some new fiberglass insulation. I will be having my family including my young son flying in this plane. We live in Michigan where the winters can be cold... so keeping the cabin as warm as I can is definitely a priority.
Thank you in advance to whoever took the time to read my post! This has already been such a great aviation community to be apart of!
Thea