Exhaust pipe, seat belts

Exhaust Pipes

My exhaust pipes arrived back from Vetterman exhausts as the originals didn’t clear the cowling. I did a quick trial fit and these ones seem much better at first glance, I don’t currently have the lower cowl as I’m re-making it, but the pipe design is quite different and should clear easily.

Seat belts

I collected and installed the rear seat belts from Fiddymont Seatbelts. Very happy with them, and the service and attention to detail was exceptional. The front seat belts are being custom made after a trial fit. We’ve decided on a longer stork length and a slightly shorter diagonal should belt.

The two photos above of the front belt are the trial fit only. The final belt is being made in charcoal grey. The stork length was a compromise to allot the seat to be adjusted fully forward.

Very happy with these results.

Rear seat locking pins

I’ve installed T ball lock pins in the rear seat to replace the AN4 bolts. This makes for a very quick exercise to install and remove the seat, and looks good. I obtained several data sheets for the pin shear strength, and discussed with Mark Goldberg, who in turn discussed with Bob Barrows. Bob wanted the hollow center section of the pin to be less than 1/8 inch (.125). I measured it at .099 inch, so it will be more than sufficient. The company I purchased them from provided their own in-house test results. They sheared the 6mm pins at 3600 kgs each. That’s a lot when you consider there’s two of them at the back (seat will likely rotate over the front two pins). Allowing 200kgs for 2 pax and the weight of the seat itself, that’s an 18 G force to shear one pin, or 36 G to shear both. At which point there’s other things on your mind.

Below is the results for the actual AN bolts: