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Individual BD-4C Seats

July 16, 2015 Art Zemon

With the seat track supports off at the welder, I am tweaking the seats that I got for my Bede BD-4C airplane so that they fit properly. The old Piper airplane seats that I got are designed to sit on the floor. In the BD-4C, though, they are about 5 inches above the floor. As such, I need to remove about 5 inches from the seats or lose 5 inches of headroom, which the BD-4C decidedly does not have to spare. Let’s begin at the beginning, with the “treasures” that I brought home from the salvage yard.

Salvage yard seats from an old Piper
Salvage yard seats from an old Piper airplane

I stripped off everything porous and you can see why airplane seats are so much lighter than car or truck seats. These are the steel frames and there isn’t any extra metal at all.

Piper airplane seat frames
Piper airplane seat frames

If I set these into the airplane, you can see that they are way too tall. Click on this photo and you will see that my head is way up behind the spar. I would not be able to see out the windshield at all. Worse, for this photo, I am sitting on upholstery straps right on the seat frame; there is no seat cushion at all.

Sitting in the pilot's seat of my Bede BD-4C
The seat is much too tall

Here is a close-up of the Piper seat, on the tracks, in my BD-4C airplane.

Piper seat in BD-4C airplane
Piper seat in BD-4C airplane

My solution is to cut as much of the legs out of these seats as possible. The back of the seat will sit on a piece of square steel tube extending straight back from the base. The front of the seat will have only enough leg remaining to keep the geometry as in the original. Here photos, part way through constructing the pieces for the left side of the first seat.

Side view of BD-4C seat frame
Side view of BD-4C seat frame “under construction”
Left-front corner of a BD-4C seat frame
Left-front corner of a BD-4C seat frame “under construction”
Left-rear corner of a BD-4C seat frame
Left-rear corner of a BD-4C seat frame “under construction”

I also made a small tube to support the middle of the seat frame, running diagonally from the seat frame to the piece of flat steel. It is not in the pictures.

By the end of this evening, when the Saint Louis summer heat chased me indoors, I had all of the pieces for the left seat cut and had constructed a jig to hold things in position for welding.

BD-4C seat frame jig
BD-4C seat frame jig

I still need to do some final grinding and sanding to get everything to fit “just right.” Once that is done, I can tack weld it together. All in all, I have removed a full 5 inches of height, which is just what I needed to accomplish.

Bede BD-4C

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About Art Zemon

Omni-curious geek. Husband. Father. Airplane builder & pilot. Bicyclist. Photographer. Computer engineer.

Comments

  1. BOB ROSANSKY says

    July 17, 2015 at 1:52 pm

    THE SEATS LOOK LIKE THEY COULD HAVE BEEN FROM A COMANCHE.

    NICE WORK.

    BOB

  2. John Brecher says

    July 17, 2015 at 5:14 pm

    The great work continues!

  3. Craig Louis says

    July 17, 2015 at 7:24 pm

    Looks like you’ve got this sectioning down pat.

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