Are you pulling your hair out to find and seal up all those drafty air leaks into your Beechcraft cabin? Well, here's a spot that I've overlooked. It's the main landing gear rod "sleeves".

These are leather/chamois covers that are clamped onto the main landing gear rods and prevent cold air from coming in under the pilot and co-pilot seats.

The aluminum rings (looks like 2 per sleeve/boot make a sandwich of the leather sleeve) for my plane PN: 33-534047-1 are long gone so I'll be making them from a template that Beech Lister Dennis S. was kind enough to make for me. Unless the RAPID price is reasonable . Well, I just got off the phone with them (02/03/2009) and no such luck! These little puppies are $100 each! Wow, they must be made of titanium? Guess I'll be "rolling my own".

I should mention that the service experience I had with RAPID today, 2/3/2009, was outstanding! The order rep brought a tech person on the line to look up the nose gear retract rod boot and they dug up the PN for my serial number aircraft while I was on the phone.

Use the picture above as a template for the aluminum plates if you decide to "roll your own", Dennis reports a thickness of 0.038" for the ring. Click on the picture for a pdf and right click to save as a jpg file.

Also, if you're so inclined the nose gear retract rod boot cover is PN: 35-825076-13 @ $47.74 on 02/03/2009. A bit steep IMHO for a little fabric cover. As you can see, some items are, IMHO, unbelievably low priced and some items are unbelievably high priced.

A source for the sleeves and other fabric covers is: Cover-Ups by Denise 321-725-9226

Check your catalog to be sure this PN will fit for you, this is the PN for a B55 Baron.              

Picture of the Denise sleeves above, courtesy of Beech Lister Bob S.'s S35 Bonanza.

Here are Pictures of the Sleeve from inside the cabin of Bob's S35 under the front seats. Bo owner Mike T. reports his illustrated parts catalog states that the sleeves were not installed on SNs lower than D7133.

Pictures below show the chamois sleeves opened flat, courtesy of Beech Lister & K35 owner, Al D.

Thanks Dennis, Bob & Al!

Here is a B55 "bootie" install cut from chamois bought at your favorite auto store and secured using the infamous Yellow 3M Weatherstrip Adhesive #08001 (very runny and stringy but quite good).

                      Pilot Side                                                                                                    Co-Pilot Side (Before)

Co-Pilot Side (After)

The Velcro is sewn in to allow installation without touching/removing the push-pull rods. The adhesive is applied around the opening and the chamois cloth is placed into contact with the adhesive. Your call as to whether you want to place a zip tie on the end to close this up further at the furthest end of the rod travel (gear down and locked). ALWAYS confirm with your A&P that your replacement cover passes muster with him for airworthiness. 

Here is a picture of a sleeve and rings made by Beech lister Mike T. using polyester reinforced vinyl and E-thread. The fabric material is reported to be strong durable and waterproof. A water jet cutting machine shop was used to make the rings.

Here are pics of how the factory attaches these sleeve and ring arrangement on an A36

You can see that the ring is riveted to the fuselage skin. Well, I can tell you that removing the wings to get these things on is not going to be what anyone will want to do!