Door weather-stripping

[N3322G]

Right now on my pa39 passenger door there is weatherstripping on both the door and the airframe. Is this correct? I thought it was only supposed to be on the door - which is the way it is on the baggage door. Thoughts?

[Charles Schefer]

Hi Pat!

It's funny you should bring this up because I'm in the middle of redoing my door seal! I researched this quite a bit in early 2014. It's my understanding that there should be only one seal - attached to the door and nothing on the airframe.

Like your plane (it sounds like), my bird had weather stripping on both sides. I didn't have any water leaks flying thru rain but ever since I've owned the plane (2 years now) there's been a hissing of air emanating from the upper leading edge of the door (around the area the little "pin" in the door goes into the receiver hole in the airframe. The little "pin" was broken. it was there but it would wobble around like it had come loose from it's mounting plate.

I bought a new pin from Webco and after a bunch of Q&A and research I bought a new door seal from Brown Aircraft Supply. The receipt is at the hangar not home with me but later I can check and send you the Brown part number / seal type. I bought it early this year during my 5-month annual / gear refurb project but after 5 months and that big gear effort I was ready to get the plane back in service so left the seal... til now.

Right now I've got the door off. I spent a few hours last night getting the old 1300L off with MEK (lovely stuff). I've got more to do - I refuse to leave any of the old glue there, I want it ALL off the door and on the airframe where there was more weather stripping. Then I am going to re-prime and paint those sections of the door and airframe door opening. After that we will go thru the service manual door re-rig procedure (must be done without a seal on the door). Once that is set we will take the door back off and apply the new seal then finally remount the door.

As far as re-mounting the door goes, I am getting rid of the original door hinge pins and roll-pins. I had bought new roll-pins but I'm not going to use them. Webco advocates using a clevis pin (MS20392-2C-27). They are available thru Webco or Spruce. It's a 3/16" diameter clevis pin and the -27 means it's usable length is 27/32" (from the base of the pin head to the top of the hole in the bottom where a cotter pin goes. Phillip says tuck the ends of the cotter pin back around and under the head at the bottom for a nice finish. Much easier to deal with than the pesky roll pin and less stress on the hinge. However, I have found what I hope is an even better option to the clevis pin mentioned above...

Grainger has Stainless Steel "grooved" clevis pins. First they are stainless and second they use a little "C-Clip / Snap Ring" at the bottom instead of a cotter pin which I think will look much better. Specifically I ordered Grainger item # 2XAA4 which is a 3/16" x 1" grooved clevis pin which has a usable length of 29/32". So... this means that instead of 27/32 (which Webco says is the tightest fit possible) for the hinge (and we verified with a micrometer - it's actually 26.56/32nds from top to bottom of the hinge) this Grainger pin is 29/32" which is is just 1/8" longer. I may take that up with a small SS washer or nothing at all. Nevertheless I think the SS pin with a C-Clip will be a cleaner finish. If it turns out I am wrong then I will order the other pins. Here's a link to what I ordered from Grainger .

- Charles

[N3322G]

Charles,

Thank you for your typical and wonderfully thorough response. I always learn something.

[Charles Schefer]

[Charles Schefer]

The seal I bought for the cabin door from Brown Aircraft Supply is:

Part / Item Number: RB-5022
Description: Solid 1/4 Round Door Seal
Price: $5.17 / foot

I bought 14' to ensure I had enough. Keep in mind I have not yet installed this seal. Last night I finished cleaning off all the old 1300L with MEK. Next I have to get the 1300L off the door frame but I hope that won't take too long. Then I've got to prime and paint both areas and let them cure a bit before installing the new seal. I'll let you know how the seal works out once it's installed.

- Charles

[N3322G]

Thx Charles

[N3322G]

Charles,

I picked up another tip from Eric - owns a single. He used play dough to assess where thicker or thinner seal might be needed. His lower airframe area had been bent so he fabricated a new door threshold and then used 3 different thicknesses of seals and is very happy with the result.

Hope this helps your efforts.

I'll be interested in how your hinge solution works.

[Charles Schefer]

Pat that's an intriguing idea, thanks for sharing. The new seal I bought is solid 1/4 round seal material. As I understand it, once it's glued in place you close the door and leave it compressed for 24hrs and it moulds to the shape that's there. I just got back from the hangar and I'm still working on the door.

Tomorrow I plan to rivet on the new pin that goes at the upper leading edge of the door (mine was broken) and I've also got a new door hinge coming from Webco that should arrive tomorrow. We will have to drill the old one off and rivet on the new (my upper hinge had a hairline crack above the roll-pin point).

At least I now have all the old 1300L off - glad that's done. Like all things with this bird they always become more involved (by like 10X) than I originally planned. I'm sure that's more a function of me than the plane tho

- Charles

[Charles Schefer]

Well to make a long story short, my new seal is installed, the door is perfectly rigged and I am a happy camper. No more air leaks in flight and the cabin is MUCH quieter. Since I've had the plane (2 years now) there's always been a bit of an air leak at the upper leading edge of the door. The leak was only slight. The bigger issue was the loud hissing sound of air over that upper forward part of the door.

The longer story - like most things on this plane I've found a small project turns into a big one in a hurry. This is probably partly due to the fact it's just a 45 year old airplane (tho perhaps "relatively" low time at 3600 hrs). Perhaps the bigger factor (according to my wife) is my incessant perfectionism...

As I previously posted; I bought a new seal from Brown Aircraft Supply:

Part / Item Number: RB-5022
Description: Solid 1/4 Round Door Seal
Price: $5.17 / foot
Note: I bought 14' of seal and after the install I have about 2' left over.

Through my research I am confident this is the correct seal and in fact I've checked and found other PA-30/39s on the field which appear to have the same exact seal installed. Here's a pic of what it looks like for scale:

Seal Material

I mentioned in my previous post on this thread that I was going to get rid of the factory hinge pins and install Clevis pins. Webco uses MS20392-2C-27 for this (see earlier post for more details). I decided instead to use almost identical but just slightly longer Stainless Steel "Grooved" Clevis pins from Grainger: https://www.grainger.com/product/3-16x1 ... uery=2XAA4. These stick out slightly below the bottom of the hinge and have a C-Clip that goes into the bottom of the pin as a retainer instead of using roll-pins laterally thru the body of the hinge. Here's a picture of what these pins look like in the lower hinge of my door while it was sitting on a table (before cleaning / painting):

Stainless Steel Grooved Clevis Pin

I feel this has worked well for me. While the pins do stick out slightly below the hinge and are therefore not as "clean looking" as the factory pins / roll-pin set-up, these new Clevis pins have several advantages:

1) They avoid using the roll-pins. In the pic above you can see the small hole in the side of the hinge where the factory roll-pin goes in to retain the hinge pin. The problem with the roll pins (and factory hinge pins) is they are straight steel and prone to corrosion. These roll-pins can also crack the hinge when being driven in or out (more on that later in this post). The new pins and C-clips are Stainless Steel

2) These new SS pins are also much easier to take in and out for easy removal of the door if / when required for maintenance. In the process of rigging the door we had to take it on and off many times. From a security standpoint I don't think this makes the plane easier to break into... let's face it if someone wants to get in they will. Even if the pins were pulled out on the ramp, the door pin (at upper leading edge), the two door close mechanisms (upper and middle rear) would prevent it coming off without a lot of force.

Note that the Webco recommended pin is a -27 meaning it is 27/32" usable length and my SS pins are -29 or 29/32" - just 1/16" longer. The pic above gives you the best idea of the length related to the hinge.

So on with the story....

I spent quite a bit of time getting all the old 1300L glue off both the door and the door jam on the airframe side. The aircraft previously had seals on both sides which is not correct and the seal that had been on was smaller, hollow, flat on one side and the other side was "U" shaped with the inside of the U being the hollow part. Once I had all the old 1300L off (several days working with MEK - wear a respirator, protective clothing, and gloves!) I then needed to repaint those areas before they would be ready for new glue. But before I got to that I had an even bigger problem...

Before we even took the door off to start this process I noticed a very small crack in the paint of the upper door hinge... right were that roll-pin goes in. We sanded it down to see if it was just a crack in the paint or if in fact the hinge itself was cracked. Unfortunately and as I suspected it was a crack in the hinge. Here's a pic of how that looked... you can see the crack emanating from the roll-pin hole upward. In a sense the roll-pin hole basically acted as a drill stop. I partly thought that perhaps this would go no further but who knows how weakened this hinge was with the crack. I talked to welding experts about possibly "v-ing" out the crack and welding it up but the consensus was it could not be welded:

Crack in Original Hinge

Luckily Phillip and John at Webco came thru for me with a brand new hinge. At first I was told they had no more.... they sometimes had serviceable used hinges but not currently. They might have a lower that could be modified to work as an upper. When Phillip rechecked the bin lo-and-behold look what he found:

Factory New Hinge

... a factory new hinge, even with the original tag and part number sticker. Looks like this had been sitting on a shelf somewhere for 45 years. Well the new hinge was nearly $400 just for the part but I really did not see a better option so off it shipped to the hangar...

END PART 1: Will continue with a another post later....

[Charles Schefer]

PART 2.... CONTINUED....

So.. my original upper hinge had a small crack but Webco sent me a new one. Now to get it on. Drilling the old hinge off was quite easy. Getting the new hinge on was another matter. First I primed the hinge and the area of the door where the hinge mounts. It's odd because I know that history says all Comanche parts were Zinc Chromated before assembly but apparently that did not apply to the hinges as the metal underside of the hinge and of the door where it mates up were bare metal. Maybe for clearance concerns. At any rate, we primed the hinge and that area of the door:

Mounting Hinge On Door

The rivets used to mount the hinge (6 of them) are solid counter sunk rivets. They are all MS20426 (solid flush mount 3/32"). However we needed different lengths of -6 and -7 because the thickness of metal to go thru is different on the 6 holes. We needed 2 -7 and 4 -6 length rivets. I ended up buying -8 and we cut each to size with a rivet cutter.

The two rivets on the leading edge of the door were easy as both sides are accessible. A simple rivet squeezer did the trick just fine. However the other for rivets must be done from the inside and require a rivet gun and bucking bar. We used a pneumatic gun and an assortment of bucking bars. We had quite a selection of bars and borrowed others trying to find one that would work. As you can see the area to work in on the inside of the door is quite tight! It seems obvious to me that Piper installed these hinges on the door BEFORE the inner door skin was spot welded in place. Obviously little to no thought was given to replacing hinges later in life:

Narrow Space to Buck Rivets

Very long story short... it took a LOT of time to get those 4 inside rivets in place and and two of us working carefully with a number of bucking bars some of which were somewhat home-made. The most effective in the end was the metal of an old brake linking pressed against the back of the rivet with a long slender bucking bar. There's no magic trick here and I hope few if any of you ever have to go thru this headache. In the end we got all the rivets on very nicely indeed.

But now there was a new problem....

Even tho we were as careful as can be and turned the pneumatic pressure way down on the gun, all that hammering on the door and we ended up with a small crack on the inside of the door skin. At this point we felt our little project was turning into a bit of a disaster (did I mention I started this simple project of putting in a new door seal 3 weeks before our Thanksgiving trip -plenty of time right?.. and now Thanksgiving was just days away...):

Crack in Inner Door Skin

So as you can see above we drill-stopped the crack (it was only a crack in the inner most layer of sheet aluminum) and technically under AC43-13 a crack of this length only needs to be drill stopped. However, I really didn't feel that would be good enough. As you can see from the pic, even tho it would be hidden under the new seal, that crack is right at the hinge point and at a place the door is somewhat stressed. We mounted the door and moving it revealed the crack moving open and closed so we knew more needed to be done. We spent the better part of 2 days trying to fabricate a doubler from aircraft aluminum but the multi-radius bends were too complicated for my simple metal break to handle.

On the Friday before Thanksgiving week I thought all was lost. I called my friends at Royal Aircraft services in Hagerstown, MD (HGR). They had helped me with my gear project by painting all the aluminum parts for me and they did a fantastic job making flush doublers in places I wanted on the gear doors... and they fabricated new wheel well linings for me as well. Given all that I called them. This is where the story takes a positive turn.... the next day Saturday I put the door in the back of the Cirrus, covered it with blankets and flew it up to HGR:

END PART 2... TO BE CONTINUED...

[Charles Schefer]

PART 3.... CONTINUED....

So up to HGR I went with the door. Perhaps the only time my Comanche's door has gone flying with without the rest of the airframe . Once at Royal Aircraft, their master welder who has been doing aircraft welding since 1968 took a look and determined it could be welded. While the hinge could not be welded the door skin in that area could based on the type of aluminum. So 10min later it was repaired:

Crack Weld

We decided not to grind the weld down. Instead we could trim the back of the door seal in that area. Leaving the weld as is would leave it much stronger. But before applying the new seal, the inside of the door needed to be painted, as well as the new hinge and unfortunately the welding process scorched the paint on the outside by the hinge. So off to the paint shop the door went where the color was matched to the correct Dupont Imron. We ended up repainting the entire upper 1/2 of the door (above the striping) to ensure a good match and the result was excellent:

Painted Door

Welded Area After Painting

Unfortunately I had to leave the door there to dry because the paint would need time to cure and it would be too tacky and giving off dangerous fumes - to dangerous to fly home in the Cirrus. So on Monday I drove back to HGR to collect the door (painted pics above are from that Monday). This was the Monday the week of Thanksgiving.

It so happened that with all their paint work Royal and a fellow on staff who was quite good at installing door seals so I brought the seal with me and they installed it in 1.5hrs. Watching this process I learned a few things about 1300L. I've used 1300L quite a few times but having observed an expert I will now never do it the same as I've done in the past. First a very thin layer of 1300L is applied to the door frame and it is allowed to completely dry. Then a second equally thin layer is applied to the seal in very small segments - a few inches at a time and applied to the area with the dried 1300L on the door. This gives the strongest seal bond. Any excess 1300L was cleaned up with a rag damped with Toluene (a solvent used in the application of 1300L).

Seal Being Installed

Some important tips in installing door seals

1) Using less 1300L is better. A thicker amount may actually result in reduced adhesion and more headaches later when you go to clean it up.

2) The seal is 1/4 round so it is logical to think it would be glued on both flat sides and affixed into the "corner" of the door rim. Not quite so... ONLY ONE FLAT SURFACE of the seal should be glued. to the flat surface of the rim / edge of the door skin. This leaves a gap between the other flat of the 1/4 round seal and the part of the inner door skin perpendicular to the door. A picture is worth 1000 words in this case... In this pic the space is also used because the door keeper that holds the door open stows in that space when the door is closed:

Seal Partly Installed on Lower Edge

3) The seal is installed as a continuous piece from the lower leading edge of the door up over the top and down the trailing edge of the door. The bottom edge is a separate piece and where the two pieces join (at the forward and trailing lower edges of the door) the seals are cut at 45-degree angles to match up. By example here is the installed seal on the lower trailing edge of the door:

Lower Trailing Edge of Door Seal

One other thing I did along with the seal (one of my original plans along with the seal) was to change out the pin on the upper leading edge of the door that goes into the receiver hole in the airframe. Webco supplied a new pin but we had to cut the bracket and shape it to fit the door curve, drill it to match the existing holes and then rivet it in place. Here is the old pin (broken) before removal:

Old Pin

After the new pin was installed and the new seal in place here's how it looks:

Upper Edge of Door Post Seal

So after finishing the new seal I took the door home for installation (Monday the week of Thanksgiving) still hoping to make my Thanksgiving trip which was now looking more promising...

END PART 3.... TO BE CONTINUED...

[Ed Asmus]

Charles,

You are an amazing man. Saying "thanks" hardly seems like enough. After all the time it has taken to complete your projects, you still take even more time to post how you did it. I don't know what to say other than your posts always bring wonderfully useful information and this forum greatly benefits from all that. I'm glad you don't mind sharing because I love reading them.

Thank you very much Charles for all your time that you share with us!

Ed Asmus

[Charles Schefer]

Ed - thanks for those kind comments, your words make my day! Couldn't sleep so I got up to finish this chain of posts...

PART 4.... CONTINUED....

So... that Monday morning I brought the newly painted door back to the hangar. What I failed to mention to this point is that between delivering the door to Royal Aircraft @ HGR on Saturday morning and picking it up / finishing it Monday morning I continued work on the door jam of the airframe back at the hangar.

I spent the rest of Saturday prepping for paint (as most of you know paintwork is at least 95% prep and 5% actual painting). It took some time to cut a plastic liner to fill the door opening and carefully tape it in place. Then there was masking off the outside of the door jam... lots of masking and plastic drop cloths to paint just a 1cm wide door jam! We use a very low pressure "turbine" paint gun for spraying the Imron which my painter friend says is 98% efficient (less than 2% overspray). But we also put drop clothes over a lot of the hangar floor and other aircraft as a precaution.

One thing I found when I removed the old seal / weather stripping from the airframe side (which should never have been there) is that underneath, right by the receiver hole where the pin goes in at the upper leading edge of the door, there was some damage. Minor (and rather odd) but something to be dealt with. Here's a pic of the receiver hole and just above it you can see there is (was) some silicone sealant there:

Receiver Hole for Door Pin

Once I removed all the silicone (paint won't stick to silicone), it was more clear. here's another pic from the top:

Receiver Hole Damage (top view)

I pondered how that could have happened at some point in the aircraft's life. Best I can figure, at some point the pin did not line up (when new the pin is rather pointy) and perhaps the door was closed and the pin did that. At any rate, I never knew it was there because the old door seal on the airframe covered it (and again there should be no seal on the airframe side anyway). So... after cleaning it up and prepping it we drill stopped the small cracks in the rain channel of the door jam that you can see in the pic above. I say "rain channel" because it looks to me that this part of the door basically consists of a U-shaped channel that a) serves to direct any moisture around the outside of the door frame and b) provides a somewhat sharp edge for the seal on the door to mate up to (more on that with later pics).

After drill stop we felt the best way to repair this was with PRC sealant which is water tight and paintable. The damage area was quite small (the pics above actually look worse to me than it did in person) but I wanted to ensure that water could not get in. We mixed some PRC and used it to fill the hole and then "smooth out "the rain channel (as I'm calling it). This part had actually been done the week prior I should have mentioned this in post 1 or 2 above...

After all the prepping of the door jam that Saturday I primed it with zinc chromate. I've used the Dupont Imron primer as well but in talking to the paint shop it's hard to beat the durability and protection of good old zinc chromate . Just be sure to wear a respirator - there's a reason the EPA and OSHA no longer have paint shops using that stuff...

By that Sunday morning (before Thanksgiving and the day before I picked the door up from HGR), we painted the door jam and I was quite happy with the results:

Painting Door Jam

Fast forward one day (back to Monday), I brought the door back to the hangar hoping to mount it. Unfortunately the paint on the door jam from the afternoon before was still not hardened. It was dry (Imron dries in about 2hrs with the proper ratio of hardener) but dry is a relative term. The door jam paint still seemed soft, almost tacky. Imron likes about 70F to cure and on the weekend we drop the hangar temp to 55F. I couldn't justify keeping 22,000 sq-ft of hangar 15F warmer all weekend just for the door jam so I put a portable heater warming the air by the door opening.

Nevertheless, the door jam was still not cured enough by Monday to be pressing the firm new seal into. It was a surprisingly warm day with a nice breeze (it actually got up to 70F that day and it was now warmer outside than in the hangar!) So I pulled the plane out in the sun to bake for a few hours...

Baking in the Sun

By Monday evening in spite of baking in the sun and keeping the heater on it in the hangar, we still felt the paint was a tad too fresh to mount the door. I forgot to mention that in that small door jam we actually had two colors to deal with and repaint - the white and the tan underneath. With two colors and time in-between that exacerbated the timing problem. So we decided we would need to mount the door the next morning (Tuesday).

My stress level began to go up a bit when I looked at the weather forecast. Or plan was to depart on our Thanksgiving trip that Wednesday and we still had a day to go right? Problem was the forecast for Wednesday, now jut 1.5 days away was pretty terrible. You may recall the news reports of what a terrible travel day the day before Thanksgiving turned into on the East Coast and in the Mid-Atlantic area (my base at HEF is just outside Washington DC). I told my wife we would either need to leave tomorrow (Tuesday - same day we planned to mount the door) or wait until Thanksgiving day - Thursday and hope the inclement weather did not intrude into the holiday. We agreed we should try and make Tuesday happen if we could.

The next morning, I got my things together, took care of the family pets and off to the airport I went. My IA (and DOM of my charter operation) messaged to say the paint was in fact fully cured on the door jam - yeah! So we were going to make it right? What else could possibly go wrong? I mean after all what was supposed to be a simple 2-day max door seal project had now stretched to 3 weeks and a lot of work which we started WELL before the holiday, and I'd promised my wife I'd started that far in advance to be CERTAIN the plane would be ready for our Thanksgiving trip... So surely the final door mounting would be a snap

Actually putting the door on with the new Stainless Steel Clevis pins WAS a snap. They made it very easy to put on and off - even one person can do the task but it's a little easier with two. It was looking good with the new door on (glare shield off in this pic as we were doing other stuff - another topic for another post):

Door Back On

Now here's the part where I need to comment on the "service manual procedure" vs "practical or real world procedures"... I've run into this before - including on the landing gear project earlier this year. The service manual calls for rigging and fitting the door WITHOUT the seal in place. This is important because the seal puts pressure that moves the door around into other positions and there is plenty of "play" in a lot of things on these old airplanes - even brand new. For instance the amount of play for movement in door hinges (or even the gear door hinges for that matter). Even a few millimeters of movement back and forth at the trailing edge of the door can make a difference. I actually had a fairly tight fitting door - not a lot of play really, nice new hinge and new pins - perfect.

The door rigging process involves trial and error; mounting the door and then adjusting the hinges and remounting the door to get a flush and even fit all the way around the door and airframe. On the airframe part of the hinge (tabs that stick out of the airframe to make the middle of the hinge) there are little inserts that look like a little gear. The teeth of the gear mate up to teeth on the tab. On the inside of the little gear is the hole for the hinge pin (where I am now using the clevis pin). The hinge pin hole is slightly off center by design. The idea is you can pop the little "gear" up and out of the hinge tab and move it's position clockwise / counter-clockwise to change the relative position of the hinge pin hole thereby adjusting how the door fits. So for each hinge you can move the position in or out but in the process you are also moving it forward or backward. It's part science and part art form...

So... we did all this door rigging prior to the door going off for paint and seal installation. We had a very good flush, even fit. However... now that the new seal was on it did not seem to fit as well at all. I'd been warned by Brown Aircraft Supply (seal supplier) and Webco and others that when first closing the door with a new seal you will be absolutely convinced you've got the wrong seal. It takes quite a bit of effort to close the door and compress the seal and the trick is to close it, leave the seal compressed for 24hrs so it sets up a "memory" of it's new shape and fitment to the airframe. At any rate this is where "book" and "real world" procedures collied because with the door perfectly rigged without the seal it just wasn't at all right with the seal. We had to make a very minor adjustment to the door rig to get the right fitment with the seal. It was indeed a very minor adjustment but an important one. I still think it's valuable and important that we rigged the door first without the seal but the reality is a small tweak was still needed after the fact.

One other important tip I learned from the "seal guy" at Royal Aircraft that no one else told me... when first closing the door with the new seal it's important to put a generous coating of DC4 on the seal. That way the seal is lubricated and can move against the door jam and find it's "seat" without tearing against the sharp edge of what I am calling the "rain channel". For those not familiar; "DC4" is Dow Corning #4. It's a silicone based grease used on a lot of aircraft applications. For instance we use it to lubricate rubber O-Rings and the like (such as on new oil filters before install). In lubricating the seal I took great care to not get any on the acrylic windows since DC4 is silicone based and silicone will craze acrylic windows:

DC4 on Seal

So all this door re-rigging took some time, and our afternoon departure target time was quickly approaching. With my IA "Joe" outside and me inside the cabin we carefully closed the door and once we had the door rig "tweaked" and were happy with it we fully closed it and I latched the door handle from the inside. I should mention that this took several attempts and we decided to lessen the strain on the door by moving the adjustable striker plate on the upper trailing edge of the door jam out slightly. This left the trailing edge of the door a few millimeters out and not perfectly flush but the idea is this is temporary just until the seal is more compressed and then we will move it back for a flush fit...

So we got the door closed... then I went to open it and it wouldn't budge. I never try to force things. Our planes are pretty sturdily built and tough as far as the airframe goes but there are plenty of bits and pieces that are delicate. The door had taken more than normal effort to close with the new seal mostly pushing / pulling inward but also in closing the door handle. In attempting to open the door I pushed slightly down on the handle to relieve pressure, pulled up on the little lock pin (an normal) and tried to open the door. The handle just didn't want to move.

After about 10min I thought I was going to climb out the baggage door to take a look from the outside but then one more attempt with just a little more pressure (not a lot just a little more) and... it happened.... The door handle moved but the door did not open. The inside splines of the door handle had stripped and the handle was now useless. As I moved it back and forth I could feel it go "thump-thump-thump" as the stripped splines of the handle bumped over the mating still good splines of the door mechanism. Playing around a few minutes more, with Joe leaning in on the door we were quite miraculously able to get the door open. At this point I'm not sure exactly how we did that. At any rate I can attest to what others have said... new door seals are tight!

In retrospect this door handle (that I'd just stripped) was on borrowed time to begin with. Looking at the inside of the handle 1/2 the splines were missing in the first place - clearly long gone. This was just the preverbal "straw that broke the camel's back" and the few good splines I had finally let go. Better to find out now than in an emergency evacuation situation but this was not good news. Now less than an hour from our desired departure time that afternoon, I had to call my wife and tell her; "Houston we have a problem..."

END PART 4.... TO BE CONTINUED...

[Charles Schefer]

PART 5.... CONTINUED....

To say my wife Carol was not pleased hearing the news about the door handle and more specifically about it's impact on our trip is an understatement. She started prepping our family minivan for the 11-12 hour drive down I-81 to Chattanooga, TN.

Meanwhile I called Phillip at Webco and he boxed up a new door handle to send me. In fact I bought two so I'd have one in reserve if this ever happened again. I knew that there was no way to get the handle here the same day but I could overnight it and hope UPS was not held up by the Wednesday forecast. Best case we'd have the plane fixed the next day but likely wouldn't be able go because of the weather forecast. Maybe we would just have to go Thanksgiving morning... NO was the answer from my better half, we will just have to drive.

I dreaded the idea of an 11-12 hour drive (each way). With the inevitable stops required for a family of five with three girls aged 9-14 that's typically what it has taken us when we drive. If VA Tech has a game letting out and we get caught in that around Blacksburg then add another hour (been there done that). I started looking for any possible options to fly. I knew if we had to drive I'd hear the inevitable questions; "why do we have this plane when we can't even use it?".... "why do you always get into these projects before we want to use the plane?"... "it always takes way longer than you say it's going to"... ugh.

Phillip (Webco) told me that the door handle is from a 64 & 1/2 Ford Mustang. I asked wife if she knew of anyone with a 64.5 Mustang. "Call the Ford dealer" she said... I knew the Ford dealer would never stock antique Mustang parts but I called anyway. They knew of a supplier in Minnesota but nothing local. Then it dawned on me.... I called my friend Bob Hepp who runs Aviation Adventures flight school at my home base HEF. Bob has a straight PA-30 and a leaseback PA-39 in his training / rental fleet. Sure enough the PA-39 was down for maintenance and thanks to Bob and the permission of the kind PA-39 owner "Jim" I was invited to go over to their maintenance hangar, let myself in and pinch the door handle off the PA-39. I could see the PA-39 was down for a longer term project with cowlings off and flight controls removed so I was sure I wasn't at risk of ruining anyone else's weekend flying plans. 10 minutes later I was back at my hanger with the loaner handle.

With the new loaner handle in place we closed the door again and opened it and closed it, etc... With each closing and opening it got easier. A few more tweaks and it was working perfectly. To be sure it was still much tighter than my old door seal but I could open and close the door easily - including in an emergency and I felt comfortable. A 3 hour flight would sure beat a 12 hour drive! Upon hearing the news the family was happy again!

We had originally planned to depart around 2pm that afternoon to arrive by 5 or 5:30pm My PA-30 consistently trues out around 170ktas, a few knots less heavily loaded. No-wind flight time is about 2:40 (hrs:min) but we'd be fighting a good headwind so I expected more like 3:15 based on FltPlan.com's prediction.

By the time we had finished the door, preflighted, rechecked everything, and loaded the plane it was now dusk. On top of that we had an unusually long IFR release but just as the sun set we were departing...

Sunset Departure

I filed for 6000 to stay out of the headwinds as much as possible and hoped for a smooth ride on the leeward side of the mountains (for those of you on the West coast you can read that as "hills"). We had a incredibly smooth flight. Departing later the winds had died down and we had much less headwind than expected and zero turbulence. It was very smooth. To make it even better, at 6K we had a clear view of the mess on I-81 below (the airway pretty much follows I-81). We could see a long line of red tail lights and every so often a big backup leading up to blue flashing police lights. "I love having this plane" Carol announced putting a extra-wide grin on my face and making the Janitrol-warm cabin feel even warmer .

We made it to CHA in 3hrs flat. With the plane safely tucked into a new heated hangar with Wilson air we went off to dinner with family and had a great vacation the next few days. The Comanche made the whole trip a thousand times better and the kids all said they really preferred flying at night anyway.

That Saturday we departed for home. Only 2:17 (hrs:min takeoff to touchdown) coming home because this time we had a nice tailwind at 9,000! My eldest daughter helped me with the flying home. Abby makes for a pretty good autopilot...

Abby Flying

Safely back at the hangar, and again the family praised the Comanche. 5:17 round-trip vs 22-24 hours on the Interstate. There's just no comparison it's like getting a whole day back, and let's face it... flying a Comanche is just more fun. The next day I returned the borrowed door handle with great thanks and a promise to return the favor if ever the tables are turned.

Back at the Hangar

Well I will end the story here. Sorry this started out as purely a maintenance story and turned into more of a maintenance miracle turning into a great family trip. Regarding the door handles... All three handles I recently held.. my original, the borrowed PA-39 handle, and the new Webco handle(s) are all different. I will post on another thread on that subject.

- Charles

END OF STORY

PS - As mentioned on the first post - no more air leaks and the cabin is notably quieter with the new door seal - beyond expectations!

[N3322G]

Charles,

I am facing exactly these set and potential set of circumstances. THANK you, thank you, thank you for posting all of the details. It will help me make the decision on what to do on my Twin - especially knowing the risks.