Phil High
Owner-pilot-restorer Dan Wood of Newnan, Georgia, at Sun ’n Fun 2008.
The original wheelpants were not
painted. I am a member of the Inter-
national Cessna 170 Association and
sometimes seek advice or find parts
from other members.”
One of Dan’s ongoing challenges
has been locating an instrument
panel cover that was close to origi-
nal. “I’ve owned four or five of these
covers, and the one that’s in there
now has the cutout for the compass
to go in the panel,” explains Dan.
The original Cessna 140 panel is sim-
ilar to the 1948 Cessna 170 panel,
except the 170 panel had outboard
holes that were formed or flared in
and didn’t have the bezels. I do have
an original 140 panel and will make
it into a 170 panel when I practice
enough to be able to form the out-
board holes. And I finally found an
original glove box door, and also
had the yokes powder coated with
the correct color and put the right
emblem on them.”
When Dan installed the new wind-
shield, he found it to be a rather
tedious process. “I had to trim it a
little bit with a belt sander to get
it to fit, and I didn’t want the one-
piece look, because I wanted to keep
it original-looking with the center
piece in it. So I made a new center
piece, and then I had to drill all the
holes to fit.”
Returning things to original is an
ongoing process—but there’s at least
one original treasure that came with
his airplane when he purchased it.
“I’ve got one of the original control
locks,” proclaims Dan with a smile.
“It has a bracket and an over-center
latch that hooks on it—it hooks the
rudders and the yoke together. I’ve
never seen another one of these, and
I have never used it. I don’t want to
scratch up the yokes.”
FUN FLYING
When Dan takes to the sky in his
straight 170, he sees an indicated airspeed of 127 mph at cruise, and the
145-hp Continental burns around 7. 5
gallons of fuel per hour. “It’s a really
nice, clean-flying airplane, and with
48 gallons, you can go quite a ways,”
adding, “the instruments are pretty
much original as far as the steam
gauges; it’s just VFR stuff. I do have a
Lowrance GPS which I like, but I still
draw lines on the sectionals—that
will always work, and I always know
where I am!”
