So as not "hijacking" a very interesting thread I now find myself very curious about interiors.

What sort of weight savings that can be realized with what seems like a reasonable cost and effort. What is the general opinion or real experiences with weight savings gained between the doors and from firewall aft ? There is clearly a lot of scope to this effort from a full on utilitarian interior to retaining a tradition, authentic look and feel but with modern products and materials.

For the purposes of this discussion lets consider interior materials only; headliner, modified seats, seat coverings, flooring etc (i.e. no instrumentation)

I'll have to weigh the old vs new carpet to see how much of a difference it made, but my new carpeting from SCS is what they call 'featherweight'. It's a lighter material but still seems like it will hold up, time will tell. With the rest of the interior I had a discussion with the guy doing the work about weight. Things like the headliner (which he's making now) are to be a very light material. Same with the sidewalls when we get to that part, make it look nice but don't plaster half a cow on there. I didn't stress about the seats though, and while they aren't super thick, the leather seems to have a very supple feel that probably doesn't come from being the thinnest, cheapest material available. On those I took advice from other BCP'ers in that there are a lot of places to save weight on the airplane, but the seats are actually pretty vital to making it fun to sit in for hours at a time, so do what needs doing on those and enjoy the ride.

I would have to dig up the thread but, I gutted the interior of my friend’s 182, installed atlee jumps seats, closed cell foam, dot flooring, etc. (pretty mich copied Bigrenna’s resto mods) and dropped 112 lbs. that was just from interior work.

Wow, just had a phone conversation with at rep SCS Interiors, the featherweight pre-cut carpet kit for a 170B come in at a whopping 3.5 lbs including the flap tunnel cover.

Timely thread for me, I'm getting ready to do a 182 interior. Totally agree about the front seats needing to be comfy, but looking forward to finding some good options for the rest of it!

colopilot wrote:I'll have to weigh the old vs new carpet to see how much of a difference it made, but my new carpeting from SCS is what they call 'featherweight'. It's a lighter material but still seems like it will hold up, time will tell. With the rest of the interior I had a discussion with the guy doing the work about weight. Things like the headliner (which he's making now) are to be a very light material. Same with the sidewalls when we get to that part, make it look nice but don't plaster half a cow on there. I didn't stress about the seats though, and while they aren't super thick, the leather seems to have a very supple feel that probably doesn't come from being the thinnest, cheapest material available. On those I took advice from other BCP'ers in that there are a lot of places to save weight on the airplane, but the seats are actually pretty vital to making it fun to sit in for hours at a time, so do what needs doing on those and enjoy the ride.

Excellent tip! did you order it with or without the foam?. Please let us know the exchange weight, I am willing for the same carpet for my 206.