The Cessna 120-140 Association Forum

When I purchased my 140 earlier this year, the previous owner included a pushbutton flap handle from a salvage yard, uninstalled. Supposedly it was from a later model 140. A friend of his with a 140 had replaced their early twist-style flap handle with this pushbutton style, and it was a straight swap - no other parts required.

So I while my plane is in the shop I told them to put the new handle in. They removed the old one, but supposedly the existing cable is now 6" too short to connect to the new handle.

Apparently there is a different seatbelt attachment point for the later style handle also, which I do not have. They are comparing it to another 140 they have at their shop.

I called Univair, and they only sell one 73" flap actuator cable. So apparently all models used the same length cable.

Has anyone done this flap handle swap? If so, did you need a different cable or seatbelt attachment bracket? I called the source for my salvage part and asked them to take a look at the donor airframe to see if I can harvest anything from that to make it work, but no word yet, so I am soliciting input from the peanut gallery.

Thanks,
Karl

Looking at the IPC Figure 15, it appears that the two are not interchangable.
The whole attach area seems to be very different.

Rick

I recall the seat pan is different. The early pan doesn't have the same attach points for the individual seat belts.

The handle bracket rivets to the floor.

The old bracket and the new bracket use the same rivet holes. The new style handle and housing are found after S/N 10000 approximately, but the part catalog tells you the cutoff.

Yes the seat belt attachment is integral to the old handle housing and the new one, but they are different. The new style seatbelt attachment bracket was originally aluminum and was associated with some failures in crashes so in 2015 Cessna recommended a steel version, which is distinguishable by a step in the plan view profile, per CE-15-13 and SEB-25-03. So anyone switching in the later style handle needs to be sure they get the steel seatbelt attachment part, which is available for about $70 from Cessna I think. It bolts directly to the new handle bracket: https://cessnadirect.com/0425132

The cable for the new version handle is about 3" longer than the old version, so that needs to be switched out. Available from Univair for about $60.

I expect these parts will do the trick. I got this info from someone who did the swap while restoring his own plane. Interestingly he seemed not to have the cable length issue, so I am not sure I have that fully sorted yet, but will see when the new cable arrives.