On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 16:50:39 -0600, "Brian Sponcil"
wrote:


There's an auto upholstery shop in town that is very well regarded and while
talking with him regarding my car I got to wondering if I could pull out my
Cherokee seats and have him leatherize them. FAR 43.100 states pilots can:

(11) Repair upholstery and decorative furnishings of the cabin, cockpit
when the repairing does not require disassembly of any primary structure or
operating system or interfere with an operating system or affect the primary
structure of the aircraft.

Hmmmm. Does "repair upholstery" cover "replace with leather" (or pleather
for that matter)? Does taking out a seat constitute "disassembly of a
primary structure"? I'm pretty sure other people have done this but I was
just wondering how "legal" it is.

If you ask 5 different people, you will get 5 different answers.

If your aircraft was originally type certificated under CAR3, there is
no current defined standard for burn resistance.

Upholstery fabric for institutional use (hospitals, nursing homes,
etc) typically has official "burn" certification. If you can find a
local upholstery shop familiar with these materials/requirements, you
would be easily meeting/exceeding CAR3 material requirements.

Seat removal/reinstallation is seldom considered to be outside of the
list of acceptable preventative maintenance tasks.

A straight seat cover replacement/reupholstery would likely also be
acceptable. Modifying/repairing the seat structure itself would be a
no-no.

Talk to the guy/gal that has been signing off your inspections, get
their opinion. After it gets through a couple of years in service, no
one will know the difference anyway.

TC