January 13, 2007 - Crotch Strap Brackets
 

I would have flown the Citabria today but light rain and overcast was forecast for the afternoon.  I did go to Essex Skypark for the airport association meeting.  The association is now running the airport and the future is looking good.  All we need now is for the ADIZ to be decommissioned. 

I pop-riveted the rear brackets to the seat ribs.  Then I trial fit the strap with the front bracket clecoed. 

I quickly realized that my Hooker Harness crotch-strap was too thick to fit between the brackets, set 1/8" apart according to the drawing provided.  The triangular chrome steel piece was 1/8" thick, but the three layers of strap was more like 1/4".  With the Dremel tool, I cut out a notch in the front brackets so the strap could fit through as shown below. 

The next obstacle was that the strap buckle was too wide to fit through the rectangular hole in the seat floor.  The strap is sewn to the buckle so it's position is not adjustable.  The buckle has to fit through that hole if you want to be able to remove the seat floors -- and I reckon you do since it is screwed down to nutplates.  My only option seemed to be widening the hole slightly as shown by the green lines below.
The job was a piece of cake with the Dremel tool.  Good practice for the panel too. 
There, it's all done.  The strap fits nicely.  And you can take the seat floor off if desired.

Actually, I havn't pop-riveted the front bracket in yet.  I'll do that during the final wrap-up stuff.  I didn't want to have to worry about the crotch-straps getting in the way of everything, including painting the interior. 

The crotch-strap bracket installation took longer than I expected, but then most everything about this project has taken longer than expected. 

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