The International Cessna^® 170 Association

Hi Everyone!
My partners and I are in the process of replacing the interior on our 1948 C-170 with a new Airtex interior kit. The interior wall panels and headliner had been removed by a previous owner and replaced with a poor imitation. As a result the original headliner support wires (rods) are missing. The folks at Airtex don't have them so I'm trying to find replacements. Does anyone have any suggestions on where I might find some.

According to the C-170 IPC (Figure 35) the original P/N's I'm looking for are:
0511001-20, -21 (1 ea.)
0511001-22, -23 (2 ea)

They can be made out of simple (I prefer stainless) welding/brazing rod (which also make good CB antennas.) Cut 'em to length.

Thank's,
I thought about doing that but the folks at Airtex told me that if they don't have the proper bend to them the headliner won't fit properly. Not sure how big a problem it is to bend them correctly, maybe it's not that hard. The other thing I'm not sure about is that the attach points for them are about 5/8" wide slots (not a "round hole"). Do you know, did the originals have flat tabs on the ends to prevent them from rolling?

All the ones that I have seen do not have flatened ends. Instead the 80-90 degree bend on the sides keeps it from rolling. Going from memory( bad idea) I would say the bend has Approx a 8-10 inch radius. Anybody have an old set to measure? Brian

The ends are fitted into the slots and are stressed into an upward arc to support the headliner by virtue of that compression. The ends are not flattened but merely rest into the slots.

I just put a new Airtex headliner in my 48 c170 the weekend before last. It had 2 long rods that ran the width of the cabin and 4 shorter rods (actually two sets of two rods that were not the same) that attached in the front to the speaker bracket and the middle to another bracket. They were straight on the end that attached to the holes on the sides of the cabin and had a complex bend on the side that attached to the brackets. They were long enough that once installed they pushed the headliner up toward the ceiling. I got the wool headliner and it was really well made and required only minimal triming on the sides.

Good luck