Interior cover over bungees?

[braol]

Is there supposed to be any kind of cover inside the fuselage over the bungees or is that area open to the outside by design?

[Ragwing nut]

no interior cover, only exterior cover

[3Dreaming]

No specific bungee cover, but there should be a kick plate below the front edge of the seat that hides them. This seems to be missing on many airplanes.

[Hank Jarrett]

Looks like this. Great place top mount things like a master switch for a battery so it is hidden and you don't have to drill holes in the panel.

Hank

[braol]

What size t model battery is that? And did you make that battery box?

[N96337]

Mine had a naugahyde "boot" over them, on the back side of the kick plate. Just one more way to keep crap off them and stuff. It attached to the square frame that is shown on the picture of Hank's.

[Hank Jarrett]

What size t model battery is that? And did you make that battery box?

I went looking in the groups for someone who had an original pre war box and Carl Carlson in Iowa loaned me his (the folks in our groups are amazing!). I made a cardboard copy of the metal parts and bent up a copy from the same thickness aluminum. Only difficult part was the rivets deep in the box (Taylorcraft had some really NICE deep throat rivet squeezers back in the day!) I still have the template in the drawing box but need to dig them out if there is interest. The size and shape don't fit any batteries I could find and I think it would have been 6 volt anyway but I did find a sealed gel electrolyte battery that fit nicely and was 12 volt with enough room for a fuse right next to the battery and a connector to make it easy to remove to charge. The sealed battery had enough capacity for over 12 hours running chargers for a hand held, portable GPS and intercom. The top pops off easy and I pull the battery out to keep it charged on the bench. The thing is, I usually don't even take the battery up with me. ;-)

[braol]

That's an amazing fabrication job. If you run across the make/model battery you have (probably, what a 6-10aHr battery?), I think I might like to backwards engineer a box using the battery as my template. I also like your wooden floorboards. Mine are aluminum...I don't even know what was standard for a '46 Taylorcraft to be honest. I even thought about replacing my aluminum floor panels with carbon fiber (I calculated about a 3 lb weight savings). Not a lot of weight, but it would give the peanut gallery something to talk about over at the EAA club hangar. Only guy in Wisconsin with a "Carbon Taylorcraft". (Heck, maybe even a carbon fiber battery box?)

[Hank Jarrett]

I will be looking for a couple of other drawings this afternoon and will keep my eyes open for the battery box templates. We had a major cold front come through and I don't think I will be looking to go to the hangar till it warms up a bit! As for the floor boards they were wood prior to the war and on the early post war planes (my 45 also had wood floors but most of the 46 and on planes I have seen they were mostly aluminum). After the war good wood workers were snapped up by the post war building boom and many of the wood parts in a Taylorcraft required more than "home garage wood working skills". THe skylights that were in my 45 were a prototype design that never made it into production. I foun15 Amp d out why when I tried to build new frames! I had to learn a LOT of new wood working skills to restore teh wood doors on the 42 and to replace the skylight frames in the 45 that were smashed when she was wrecked. The battery I use in the pre war battery box is actually slightly smaller than the box which gave me room for the plugs and fuse as well as some shock absorbing packing all while having a LOT more capacity. The battery is a MIGHTYMAX Model ML15-12 12 Volt 15 Amp Rechargeable sealed lead acid battery.

Hank

If there is actually interest in anyone building a pre war battery box I should probably start a new thread since we have drifted pretty far from the original bungee cover title for this one! I can also post photos of how I set up the intercom and switches on the kick panel.