Chapter 26 – Seat Cores, Round 2

Today I got the seat cores back from Oregon Aero, which was a bit of a surprise since I knew they were on their way, but they arrived a couple days earlier than the tracking originally stated.

The seat cores 2.0 are a HUGE improvement over the initial versions. All the cushions fit MUCH better —darn near final state— and even the look of them in place is vastly improved.

Alice and Lisa at Oregon Aero worked every tweak I asked them to… here the thinned and “ridgidized” front seat leading edge, the back filled area (yellow) around the fuel selector valve, and simply eliminating the small indentation we were trying to create to allow for the cup holder (not needed).

The front seat upper cushion actually makes visual sense now and looks 10x better as well. It follows the angles of the front seat bulkhead and looks like it belongs. Huge, huge improvement.

Grant it, these are my initial visual observations of course. I will definitely need to do an extended butt-in-seat test again to assess the new mods.

I have to say, my biggest disappointment is the front seat headrest. They thinned it down by a good inch like I asked, and also lopped it in two horizontally at about the midway point, but it’s a mess as far as having any faint semblance of symmetry. It’s just all wonky! Luckily it’s a small piece and should be a quick fix.

Not to be negative, because I am really happy with the results of this last round of tweaks… but I can see that the angle of the uppermost front seat top will have to be tweaked so that the top back edge is reset about 1/2″ aft of where it is now.

That being said, it just all looks SO much better than it did before!

I had them split the pilot’s headrest pad for practical reasons when on the ground. I think this headrest pad will provide me just as much comfort –when I use it– as would one that’s a solid piece.

I plan to mount the lower headrest pad so that it’s fixed in place pretty much permanently. The upper headrest pad will most likely just be velcro’d in place to allow for easy removal.

This configuration will allow me access into the headrest storage without having to remove the entire headrest pad (as before) and, moreover, it gives me a padded stop for the upper part of the headrest to rest on when open.

Ok, so where the front seat improvements were definitely significant, the back seat updates are night-n-day from the state these cores were in before.

The lower seat cushion is significantly wider and fills in the area between the two armrests very nicely now sans the huge gaps on each side that were present before. The added padding material is even visible along each edge.

The freshly tweaked back seat upper cushion is a phenomenal improvement over the first one. It’s significantly wider, which hides the spar storage access opening, and the height is perfect now. Previously it was so short on the top side that the cushion simply fell into the spar storage opening.

I’m very pleased with the job Oregon Aero did on both front and back upper seat cushions. They really made these seat cores look like the custom fit cores that they are!

I also had Alice & Lisa tweak the back seat headrest as well from it’s prior distinct flat spots and angles to a simple curved shaped.

BTW, any slight misshapes or minor alignment issues typically get wrangled in when these cores are crammed into their respective upholstered covers.

Here we have another couple shots of the back seat headrest and the top portion of the back seat upper cushion. Note the height of the back seat cushion… they nailed it!

In the next few days I’ll try to get my keister back in the saddle for a good hour to test fit these cores out.

Now I just have to decide the color(s) for my upholstery!

. . . and of course get the shop in shape for building.

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