PA28 Door seal

[G-DCGroup]

Hi anyone know the best type of rubber seal to use and where to get it fitted, rgds:confused:

[Johnm]

Your maintenance shop will do it.

[A and C]

Try the aircraft parts manual, it will tell you the part number of the seal you must fit.

[Johnm]

Morris Minor door seal at fourpence a yard held on with contact adhesive will work fine, but isn't approved.

[A and C]

So you fit the cheap seal and when the aircraft gets to it's annual check you risk paying the going rate to have the seal replaced with the correct item.

Do it right and do it once!

[Johnm]

Morris Minor door seal

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So you fit the cheap seal and when the aircraft gets to it's annual check you risk paying the going rate to have the seal replaced with the correct item.

Do it right and do it once!

You misunderstand, I was just making the point that a non-critical item is easy to come by and cheap, but you can't use it 'cos it ain't approved. The same stuff duly approved will be around 100* the price.

[Pilot DAR]

A Morris Minor door seal on a PA-28 would be a "minor" defect.

Austin, or Leyland, or whichever motor car maker made the Morris, did not endure the immense certification cost that Piper did to get the door seal approved. The part might be the same, the certification and tracability certainly are not! Cherokee doors can be fussy, using a non-approved door seal wold not help the situation.

Use the right parts.....

If, on the other hand, you're going to actually fly the Morris, then a Morris door seal would be appropriate!

[Johnm]

Cherokee doors can be fussy, using a non-approved door seal wold not help the situation.



Actually I've owned a PA28 for years and the door seals are junk, that's why the doors are fussy. There are much better materials available, but cost of approvals for a redesign aren't worth it to Piper.

[mad_jock]

My work machine turboprop has a moris minor parking brake handle fitted as the emergency brake.

And I wonder how many chrysler car fuel fuel pumps are fitted to various pipers around the country with the identification plate swapped from an old one.

Best thing to do is forget the door seal and invest in some decent covers not quite keeping it in a hanger but makes a huge difference.

[IO540]

Yes; most small parts on GA planes are off the shelf items. You are not going to spend £100k on a diecasting tool for some silly little door handle.

The seats in my TB20 are ex Renault, albeit with custom upholstery.

If the door seal is of a constant cross-section all the way along, it is likely to be a standard automotive neoprene rubber extrusion - especially on a Piper which is a pretty agricultural company. However it might be next to impossible to find the actual part. I have tried this sort of thing (in a different context) and even though I had the actual mfg part # (it is stamped on the part) and a photo, the manufacturer (a huge car parts maker) totally refused to communicate, and many many faxes sent to their various dealers also drew a blank, until eventually I found out that I could order it easily if I had the make and year of the vehicle it was used in :ugh:

A dare say a lot of digging around the motor trade would do it but how much time do you have?

An added dimension is political: a lot of these items are unsuprisingly no longer made for the original car application, so the mfg knows that any enquiries they get will be from pilots (or similar) trying to bypass their cushy aviation-paperwork cash cow. There are so many people trying to bypass this system (for obvious reasons) that the whole business is very wise to this kind of stuff and they close ranks faster than the Met :) The irony of it is that the mfg rarely produces the aviation paperwork; they ship batches of the item, with a simple Cert of Conformity, to an FAA Repair Station somewhere, which generates the 8103-3 forms using some extremely expensive laser printer toner ;) Then, an EASA 145 company buys these and generates the EASA-1 forms using an even more expensive laser printer toner ;)

I had some fun trying to bypass Socata on the ISO-thread hydraulic hoses. A £600 Socata hose can be bought from Saywells in Worthing for about £200 (the US-thread ones are about £60). But the mfg of the end fittings (Eaton) sells them only to Socata (and probably Airbus) and sees this from a mile away, and quotes a crazy lead time. You can still get them... with an EASA-1 form. Just have to plan ahead.

It can be fun sometimes, however :)

Door seals are likely to cost a few hundred quid.

[mad_jock]

Rumour has it...

I think on the hercs there was a highly technical ball with a yellow spot on it.

These used to cost hundreds of pounds when you needed a new one.

One day someone was in the right office at the right time to see a load of £3:50 squash balls being transfered into aviation part bags.