The International Cessna 170 Association

Jason, can you post a table which shows us the weight and balance calculations for your aircraft?

56D weighs 1305. Two colors of Imron, 35A generator, Delco Remy starter, leather interior (seats have the original springs and padding in them), strapless windshield, original gear legs, full gyro panel (VFR), King KLX135A and Narco AT150 with an AR850 encoder. I expect there to be some variances in materials...but metal will be way more consistent than wood. I would really love to know how Cessna certified the airplanes to get the empty weight what they claimed. The mind boggling thing to me are hearing about 1300b airplanes with no paint...internal primer or external finish.

Aryana wrote:I'd gladly reduce my useful load by another 100 lbs if I could have a Continental IO-360 with a CS prop hanging on the front!!!

You can, and you don't even need to go through the IO-360 conversion! My '54 with a Lycoming O-360 with CS prop weighs 1408 empty, including paint, heavy front seats from a '75 172, full interior, etc. I went to Leadville on Sunday with two aboard and full fuel, climbing to 15500 on the way!

The Lycoming O-720 is way to heavy.

Try a TCM TIO-360 instead!

Might need to add some lead to the tail.

Aryana wrote: Back on topic, Is there enough crap you can move to the tail in a C-170 to install that engine and stay within CG?

Almost! I'd love to ditch the Hartzell for an MT.

Aryana wrote: You even make having cowl blisters seem bearable with that kind of performance

Hey, let's not go overboard here!

Aryana wrote:...

I'd gladly reduce my useful load by another 100 lbs if I could have a Continental IO-360 with a CS prop hanging on the front!!!

It's not your useful load that's hurting your climb performance. It's your operating weight.

(These airplanes are sluggish above 2,000 lbs operating wt.)

I've always considered it a really swell single or two-place airplane...with the capability of occasionally carrying another couple out of long strips for short trips.

Exactly. Useful load is meaningless with the O-300 when you can't load it anywhere near gross.

I have to disagree. I have flown at gross a few times, once out of Carson city at 6700 DA and while it was not relaxing for the first 500 feet, with a bit of ridge lift we got up to 9500' in 20 minutes or so.

At sea level gross is quite manageable, but certainly not lively.

I would love more ponies up front.

I wonder if the Wing X wing extensions would be a viable alternative to a bigger motor for situations like that.

I have seen them on a couple of 180s, but never on a 170. I think the sportsman STOL would be my first choice, but really we all just need more power.

Also kind of a drag in a hangar.

I have WingX on a 180. Definitely helps get off the ground at high DAs, but it doesn't (greatly) increase rate of climb once I'm off and flying.

Many years ago before I did the conversion with the 180 HP, I was flying out. With a friend who weighted in over 110 kgs. As we taxied out another person coming running out a waved us down asking for a lift to the flyin and he had a friend too all were around the 110 kg size . I was doing a quick maths in my head as I had full fuel and over 400kgs of pax. I was surprised that we had lifted off by the cross runway and was climbing out ok. The climb out to 2000ft was ok but the resultant climb out to 4000ft was very slow as by the curvature of the earth. After landing at the flyin and taxing to a stop the announcer giving a commentary on the types of aircraft landing stated for all to hear ," here we have a Cessna 170 annndd, it's got 400 kgs of lard getting out of it . I then decided to go on a better eating plan. I flew home by myself that evening .