The International Cessna^® 170 Association

Hi,

I am considering cleaning up my lower dash panel this winter. few questions

-Who if any one makes the switch placard?
-What is the stock colour of the lower dash in a 53? mine is currently a dull lighter brown
-Where can i purchase stock style pull switches?
-What has been done to convert to breakers over the old stock fuses?

Well, here's my panel (before I added a 2nd horizon):



The "stock" paint colors are listed in the owners manuals and other locations, including your aircraft door placard/datatag, but this is a troublesome issue because Cessna used paints no longer in commercial production and paint numbers become meaningless. It sounds as if you have what was known as "Lima Tan" but it could also be "Trooper Tan". (If you are re-doing your panel you can take a sample of what you have and have it color-matched, or you can select a readily-available rattle-can paint that you can easily find again when you need to make a change or correct a scratch or wish to repaint your rudder pedals, etc. The color you are seeing in this pic is actually a DupliColor Truck/Van/SUV, a Ford color, No. T135 "Cordova Brown (M)".. available at Auto stores.) It was the closest available to the Cessna original panel when my airplane was restored. (It won the Oshkosh "Restoration Award" in 1997.)

The lower panel in my airplane is a clear acrylic panel, which was reverse-engraved, and the lettering filled with Tempro paint. It allows the base panel color to come "thru".
The stock switches are available from Cessna (Hill Aircraft, cessnaparts.com ) but they are also available from more common sources such as NAPA, and others. The problem you will likely find will be the lack of original plastic knobs for those pull-switches. If you can find them, you can paint them the color you wish using polyurethane paint. (Mine are DuPont Imron "Gull Grey")
Converting to CBs from fuses is a really good mod...but not as easy as you might think. First you should consider getting rid of all the old, ragged wiring "rats nest" that likely exists in a complete re-wire using modern Tefzel aircraft wiring and connectors. When you redo you panel, you can cut the appropriate sized holes for Klixon aircraft circuit breakers, if you want the look mine has. (Notice that the need for addt'l equipment CBs was accommodated by added a secondary CB panel below the copilot's panel.)

If I was not an "originality nut' , and I was doing a new panel, I'd strongly consider using "toggle/circuit-breakers" in lieu of separate switches and breakers. A good product for that is the ones sold by Spruce (previously known as "potter brumfield") known as Tyco W31 types.
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/e ... key=219472

This will also save panel space as well as provide a quality switch instead of the pull switches.
Hope this helps.

I mounted my breakers on 2 x 2 x 0.063 aluminum angles along the bottom edge of the panel. IIRC, I was able to use existing holes to mount the angles. The one on the left uses the breakers George describes above and essentially replace the original fuses one for one. One of those beakers feeds through the original radio master switch to the panel on the right which has individual circuits for each item of avionics. The avionics breakers are "push to reset" type breakers.

I did my panel about six years ago, both top and bottom. There is a lady associated with the Cessna 120/140 association who did my plexiglas switch/controls, as I recall her name is Joy. As I recall the price was under $100. and she did a beautiful job. To accommodate the replacement you will need to remove all the push/pull controls and switches as well as the fuse holders. Fuse holder removal will require cutting your bus bar which in my case was a 10 gauge wire with the fuse holders soldered into it. I chose stay with the fuse holders as opposed to circuit breakers to maintain as much originality as possible. As long as you're there you may as well replace all the wiring, wiring and terminals are cheep and well worth the extra work, I can imagine there is a lot of additional resistance just due to 60 years of corrosion build up in the wiring. A lot my original wiring actually had a coating of green on some of the bare wire. I tried to upload a photo but I couldn't seem to get the size below the one meg size limit.