When I bought my 12 it had/has Airtex seat covers. The cushion for the back seat had a couple of flaps that hung down to cover the gap between the seat bottom and the floor board -- you've all seen these things and even the new Legend Cubs have 'em. I hate 'em. These flaps are supposed to snap in place but the snap gizmos often either won't reach or are missing, so they really don't do much good. I cut mine off. This left a 6 inch high opening to the whole of the aft fuselage. I didn't think much about this until not long ago when I was heading home solo from a grass strip in another state. I was trying to get out ahead of a glider towplane, so I dropped my sectional down beside my seat and gave it the gas. Once clear of the field, I reached for my map but it was gone, having disappeared into the gaping orifice under the back seat. I didn't really need to the map to get home, but I wasn't too fond of the idea of it finding a home deep in the butt end of my airplane. Obviously, I needed to cover the hole. Not long after, while on a recon mission to my local Home Depot store, I stumbled upon 48" long sections of perforated vinyl rain gutter guards. They looked to be about 6 inches high and didn't weigh hardly anything per section. "Hmmm," I said to myself. So I picked up one for $1.98 and a 48" 3/4" aluminum angle and headed for the hangar. After about an hour of measuring, cutting and fitting, I had a part that perfectly filled said gap between the seat and the floor without blocking air flow through the cabin. The gutter guard has a channel along one edge that is just the right size to slip over one leg of the aluminum angle, so I screwed a couple of pieces of angle to the floorboard and put velcro along the top edge of the gutter guard and front edge of the seat bottom support, then painted the whole thing black to match my carpet. The angle holds the bottom of the part in place while the velcro holds the top. Looks great (much better than tattered vinyl flaps) like a real airplane part and now nothing in the cockpit except air can find its way into the bowels of my fuselage. Come annual time, the thing just pops right out in about a second. The part is not structural, nor is it permanently attached to the airframe. It looks good and, above all, it works. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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Originally Posted by oldbaldguy
Take care.
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