Seating mods

[egonz9998]

Has anyone thought of adding 1 or 2 more seats to cozy m iv?

maybe adding a Franklin 230 hp?

[Nathan Gifford]

Its nicknamed the Cozy V (vaporware). A lot of people have been talking about it, but I would think the limited number of builders who would be willing to build one would mean that it would likely be certified a/c.

 

The closest a/c to that would be the 540EZ since it was stretched 12" to accomodate the 540 powerplant. Rear seat leg room is incredible (the a/c was stretched 12" behind the front seats. However, I don't think the builder envisions adding another passenger station orobably for cg reasons.

 

Bear in mind that building a Defiant twin takes more than twice what building a Cozy does. There would probably be different materials too (the 540EZ uses some carbon fiber) which require significantly better skills.

 

Keep asking the questions, sometimes, with time, the answers change...

[Spodman]

Check out the newsletters for what Nat thought of the Franklin:

 

http://www.cozybuilders.org/newsletters/news_toc.html

 

Have a look at 53-56. The conclusion:

 

"The 90 extra Ibs. of engine plus 25 Ibs. of ballast equates to one light passenger, in exchange for a little more hp and a little more speed. For us, we don't believe it is worth it. We have, in our hangar, a 180 hp Lycoming 0-360, which we purchased in 1991 for $5500 with 1540 hrs since new, which now has 1820 hrs since new and might be good for another 500 hrs, or 4 or 5 years of flying. I like light airplanes, so we plan to put the Lycoming back in.

 

This has been an expensive experiment. We spent over $15,000 on this project, not counting R & D time (the first time you do something its always more expensive). We didn't do it for ourselves, because we were happy with our Lycoming, but we have been under this continuous pressure to suggest some alternate engine possibilities. We considered the Franklin to be the most promising substitution, but it has turned out to be heavier (installed) than we expected. The extra engine weight could be offset by a heavier front seat weight, or by locating the battery in the nose, but we will not recommend it for the average builder..."

 

You need to ask yourself if the marginal performance increase is worth months of extra work and extra cost.