The International Cessna^® 170 Association

Have seen battery boxes on ebay, not very often though. But they seemed to go for about 1/3 of the new price.

Well I hate to say it, but the battery box situation is another reason to go with Odyssey. They have hold downs aready designed and fabricated. Stoddards air parts here in Anchorage has 'em on the shelf.

N3243A wrote:Well I hate to say it, but the battery box situation is another reason to go with Odyssey. They have hold downs aready designed and fabricated. Stoddards air parts here in Anchorage has 'em on the shelf.

I agree, Bruce. Getting away from a battery box would be nice, but on a Cessna 170 in the lower 48 states, how would you get it approved?
Aircraft Spruce sells generic battery boxes for around $100.

Well I don't know what the status of field approvals are these days. But they are a very common field approval up here, especially for C-180's because they mount the battery from behind the cargo bulkhead to the firewall and use one of the new holdown brackets to hold it there. I hear the rules are really going to tighten up on approvals.

Gahorn wrote: [Aircraft Spruce sells generic battery boxes for around $100]

George, How can the use of a generic battery box be any different than a generic venturi? Randal

R COLLINS wrote:Gahorn wrote: [Aircraft Spruce sells generic battery boxes for around $100]

George, How can the use of a generic battery box be any different than a generic venturi? Randal

There is no difference. To use one of those boxes would require a basis of approval. The comment was informational only. (That's why I said "generic". To make it legal, your mechanic would have to finish it's "manufacture" according to your specifications as an owner-produced part, just like the carb heat repair kits sold at Wag Aero.)

I also put a Concorde RG-25XC AGM battery in my 54' 170B a little over a year ago and it has been doing just fine. Lower in weight, higher power output, and no battery acid/servicing to worry about. Also didn't worry about an STC because I didn't think one was neccessary

Per George's advice I ordered a new battery box from Spruce. $129 for a new powder-coated box seems like a very good deal compared to Cessna's $615 list price.
Rudy

gahorn wrote:

R COLLINS wrote:Gahorn wrote: [Aircraft Spruce sells generic battery boxes for around $100]

George, How can the use of a generic battery box be any different than a generic venturi? Randal

There is no difference. To use one of those boxes would require a basis of approval. The comment was informational only. (That's why I said "generic". To make it legal, your mechanic would have to finish it's "manufacture" according to your specifications as an owner-produced part, just like the carb heat repair kits sold at Wag Aero.)

To "finish the manufacture" of this already designed, fabricated and powder coated battery box and call it an "owner produced part" is to do what? Bolt it to the firewall? Sounds a lot like the 9" venturi I just screwed to my fusilage. It's funny how some of the parts I design and fabricate just happen to be Spruce catalog items.

The point is that most of us have to stretch the rules a tad bit now and then to keep these birds flying at a reasonable price. I wouldn't pay $615 for a Cessna battery box either!!!

Bruce, '53 170B

I know how you feel, Bruce, but....just bolting your venturi onto the fuselage is not going to make it conform to AN5807-1. It would still be the wrong item until it's altered to the correct standard. A battery box is not a standard AN specification. It's purpose=built. Sorry.

Your good George, your good. But my point from my last post still stands. If you want to stand letter perfect on this issue, the fact is the Spruce battery box ain't no "Owner produced" part (even if you perform a minor alteration, like drilling new mounting holes) and it isn't listed in the IPC, so by what basis can someone mount this box again??? Sorry.

You can argue til the cows come home. I don't write the rules. I just kinda understand 'em and kinda see the point of 'em.
I'm not the FAR Nazi, and I don't really want to know what level of conformity anyone's particular plane is in. It ain't my business....unless I'm going to be responsble for it. (I'd better not find that somewhere down the road I've flown an illegal piece of junk and carried my family in it. I'll be hunting someone down!) I gaurrantee if I just made up an answer to be convenient and cheap, someone else will be angry with me over it after they follow it and get busted. What would you personally want when you ask me a question, Bruce? The truth?...so you can go do what you wish with it?....Or a fabrication?....that you faithfully follow and later find a very expensive error?
My job here is to give the correct answer as best I can. You don't have to buy a box from Spruce and alter it. (And just drilling holes in it is not going to make it an owner-produced part any more than just bolting on the super-venturi would, so there's no point in trying to imply it is... just to ridicule the truthful statement I made.) I told Rudy about that Spruce box so he'd have an alternative he could both afford and still be legal if he were willing to take a few extra steps. The dialog exchange that took place here at the public forum does not tell the whole story of the conversation that took place between myself and Rudy. For brevity, only the bottom lines were posted, which made for an incomplete representation of the conversation. Rudy was desperate to find a box that would hold a battery and fit his firewall and not match the Iraq war debt. He knows it's not a Cessna box. After the conversation he knows how to meet the rule. He shared with his friends here at the forum the direction he was headed.
An owner can take his corroded box, buy aluminum sheet, and copy the original box, and that would be an owner-produced part, perfectly legal to install. Just like you could buy aluminum tubing, spin it into a venturi conforming to AN 5807-1 and install it just as legally. But an easier method might be to take a box that someone else has made without your request and specifications (and therefore doesn't meet the rule of owner-produced part)...and use it as a basis to finish it to your owner-produced part specification. (Whether that's merely painting it with acid-proof paint, or if that's rivetting the correct mounting brackets to it so it'll mount the firewall, or.....you name it,....but whatever it takes.....Once it conforms to the original it's an owner produced part as long as the owner did it, or ordered it done under his acceptable-data specification.
But Bruce, to take your frustration with the rules to the extreme position: that because you consider them despicable, does not justify violating them AND still enjoy legality. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either you can follow the rules and have an airplane that conforms to the acceptable design....or you don't and have a non-conforming airplane that just happens to still satisfy you. Take your pick, but you can't have both.
It serves no useful purpose to continue as if to say: "It works just as good as I need it to, therefore it's not fair the FAA won't agree to call it an approved replacement part. It is too, because I like it!"
It's this very situation of old airplanes that don't have a ready supply of replacement parts that the FAA accomodated us with an "owner-produced part" provision. I think it's commendable they did it. All they want to do is encourage owners to maintain their airplanes correctly and avoid having a bunch of owners doing what you are promoting....namely ....take anything that fits and use it ....and still claim it's equal to a legal part.
Don't get defensive. I'm not making a personal attack. I'm just discussing the viewpoint. Just turn the tables around and put yourself in the position I'm in of interrupting your own day's schedule and having to answer ....not just the questions you want to answer....but also have to answer the ones that aren't easy. To have to be accountable to owners who want the FAA not to give 'em hell later on after they've spent a bunch of time and money acting on your advice.
I've spent entire days trying to help owners who've bought planes with undocumented "parts" that aren't really "parts". But now, years later, they're the owners of very expensive investments that the inspector won't let out of the hangar until it's correctly airworthy and there's no replacements for the "home remedy" someone did 15 years ago because that "someone" was too cheap/lazy/crooked/devious/inventive/rebellious (take your pick) to do it correctly. I want to see the History channel documentary but he wants to call back for the third time and whine about how expensive airplane parts are and don't I know a cheaper way to do it? (He means legally, of course.) Then I'm trying to eat a meal while it's still hot and our guests are still here and he calls back the fourth time wanting to know why a plumbing part won't work. After all, it worked fine for the last dozen years didn't it? Why won't his IA accept this?
Then there's the guy who doesn't even try to do his homework, he just calls me right out of the box wanting "that little thingy on top of the bent-gizmo between the ribs...you know the part....no, I don't have a parts catalog.." and then after I spend two weeks chasing dead ends and find the last one in the New World ...call him back on my nickle and ...you guessed it,.... Well he didn't want to spend money on it!
Trust me. If the previous owner had done the right thing, there'd be at lot more airworthy 170's around these days instead of the junk that I see daily that some unsuspecting new owner is crying over.
Yes, your super venturi will suck air. Lots of it. You'll probably be happy with it and it'll probably never break. But it won't be legal until you take all the steps necessary, and available, to make it so. Period. And the next owner, if he's smart, will see it on the annual inspection pre-buy report and beat you down on the price because of it. You won't have saved any money.
How smart is that? Each person gets make the decision.

George,I can definitely see your point about the venturi needing to meet the spec (AN5807-1) to be legal. but,I can also see bruce's point about the battery box not being legal,whether identified as an owner-fabricated part or not. That bit about "finishing it's manufacture" by drilling a couple holes or painting it sounds like a bunch of hooey (no offense). If I was an FAA Airworthiness guy,I'd red-tag that part immediately after hearing that line.
Regards the generic battery box,I would think that a field approval via 337 would be the acceptable way to go,and maybe the only acceptable way to go, and hopefully wouldn't be too hard to obtain either. It is just a box to hold the battery,after all.
And is an owner-built battery box legal anyway? After all,new battery boxes are available--they're not obsolete,just way overpriced. I can think of a buncha parts that I'd like to "build" myself,cuz they cost too much when ya go to buy them.
Maybe Bruce isn't the only one who needs to be reminded that you can't (or as they say down your way,cain't) have yore cake & eat it too. (doesn't apply to me though,I'm on a diet & can't eat any cake anyhow)

Eric

Good Lord, take a chill pill George. I didn't take this personally at all. In fact I thanked you for clarification for the reason behind your hard position on things as the Parts/Maintenance coordinator. I understand the reason much clearer now. Your advice has to go beyond just practical but to legal and to some extent you have to be a FAR nazi. Since you held me to the hard line on the AN specs of these stupid venturis, I decided to hold you to the hard line on the basis of approval for the Spruce Battery Box. Fair is fair. How was I or anyone else reading this to know that you had private e-mails with Rudy informing him how to meet owner produced part conformity, and why not share that info with the rest of us?

I don't want to argue till the cows come home and I'm not that frustrated with the rules. Also where in any of my posts do I say that I am "frustrated in the extreme" and "find rules despicable" I only do this to be the Devils advocate, and keep you on your toes, because we have had so much fun in the past. And one more thing, I am NOT "promoting anything that fits and use it" (your quote). My posts are about what I have done only. Readers can pick or choose procedures as they see fit. I would appreciate it if you would not put words and intentions on my posts that are not true or intended. It may surprise you to know that my aircraft is quite compliant with the rules. I publish the exceptions, (like this dumb venturi thing) perhaps foolishly but as a practical solutions at reasonable cost for the benefit of other members. Is this promoting Illegal installations? I dunno. My A&P IA performed and signed off the mod willingly and with full knowledge. I can accept that as good enough. (I stated that I was VFR only. IFR flyers look elsewhere.) Others can decide for themselves.

Respectfully, Bruce Christie, N3243A, '53 170B

zero.one.victor wrote: Maybe Bruce isn't the only one who needs to be reminded that you can't (or as they say down your way,cain't) have yore cake & eat it too. (doesn't apply to me though,I'm on a diet & can't eat any cake anyhow)

Eric

Eric, you might be one state too far west with the cain't, think that's used over in flyguy's area. We would be quilty of saying ain't too bad to eat a little of that cake. Wonder where it is that they are having some of that mouse milk with the cake? Is that up in the Washington area?