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Airtex Quality - A Pirep

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guzziguy

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As I've written elsewhere, I am redoing my interior.
I chose Airtex over TnWings because (and only because) of the larger name recognition and the dedication to customer service I heard from others.

I am starting to question the wisdom in this decision.

Where do I begin?

1) Lead times. 8 weeks for the seats, 2 weeks for everything else. TnWings (so I heard from another member of this forum) was approx. 2 weeks for the seats. Comparable quality. As a professional in the discipline, it is abundantly clear to me that Airtex needs some serious help in reducing their cycle times and dealing with their lead times.

2) Incomplete information. I wanted to redo all the upholstery except the headliner. So, I ordered everything except the headliner. When everything arrived, the wrong piece of carpet was sent so I had to wait for the replacement. Also, the rear bulkhead and the piece for the top of the door were missing. Turns out, when you order the side panels, the rear bulkhead is NOT included in the package. Similarly, the top piece of the door is actually a part of the headliner kit and not the upholstery kit. I can KINDA see the door piece not being included, but the rear bulkhead? Why is that a separate order not included in the side panel kit??? Of course, this wasn't discovered until I asked. Thanks for the extra shipping charge and delay. Would have been nice to have the sales person confirm that I wanted to redo my entire interior of the plane but KEEP the original rear bulk head for no good reason.

3) Excessive Trimming. I fully understand that these planes are hand made and there will be differences from plane to plane obviously making any interior refurb based on patterns inherently difficult. Trust me, I get it. But the amount of trimming required is MUCH more than what I was led to believe by anecdotal reviews by other owners (not the fault of Airtex). All I'm saying is, BE PREPARED for much more trimming than just a little here or there. You will be cursing, cutting 1/4 at a time, constantly checking, double checking, bringing pieces in then pulling them out again over and over again just to make sure you don't cut too much off and ruin the whole piece.

4) Poor build quality. When installing the front pilot-side panel, I lined up the rear pilot-side panel. Of course, as many have commented here, Airtex provides ZERO instructions on installation (more on that later). After receiving 'instruction' on how to install the rear pilot-side panel by phone/email, I realize that the vinyl sections do NOT line up! And, not only do they not line up, but the rear panel is too LONG forcing an overhang into where the rear bulkhead wall would be (still hasn't arrived yet). Still waiting on Airtex to tell me how to deal with this, if it's possible at all. Can I guess more trimming will be required? As you can see, the top of the two panels are aligned with each other and the frame of the plane, but the bottom edge is WAAAY off.
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5) Zero Instructions. WTF? I believe I read somewhere that the owner of the company preferred to NOT include instructions, forcing emails/calls back to Airtex to "ensure quality." From a quality perspective (a discipline I am intimately involved in as a career), this process is so contrary to every quality best practice out there that it's almost a joke. The idea that one must call or write to get instruction on installation is ludicrous. If nothing else, a booklet listing what the ASSUMPTIONS are for what a CORRECT installation looks like would be incredibly helpful. Instead, my experience has been to try to make it work, realize it's not working, wonder how to make it work, write an email with pictures describing what's not working and FINALLY receive an email from the owner describing what it's supposed to look like or what piece goes where. HOURS, DAYS... I think it is probably impossible to have a process more inefficient and maddening to customers.

6) Paint matching. I emailed the company asking which SEM paint would be appropriate to match with the colors I chose. Instead of "oh, that's SEM color 15530," I was given some incomprehensible MIXTURE formula with zero instructions (big surprise). When I asked a follow up question, I was told I would have to wait for the boss to get back. Inefficiency strikes again. All I was looking for were the SEM paint code numbers that matched my colors. How is this difficult? How is this something new? A simple color code was apparently never requested before. And no, the company never followed up with me. I ended up ordering a small booklet online separately where I was able to eyeball a color match. Turned out pretty good. Unfortunately, ordering the paint was delayed until the upholstery came in so I could do the eyeballing. More delays. I could have had my trim painted weeks ago, but instead I had to wait for the upholstered side panels to arrive to ensure a good match.

7) Materials Quality. This is really the only place the Airtex shines as far as I can tell. The quality of the materials is what I expected coming from a nationally known company.

All in all, I'm pretty well disappointed and quite pissed at how this project has gone so far. Given the chance, I would NOT buy from Airtex again. What I was hoping to be a fun, mildly challenging personal project to fix up my plane has turned into a months long ordeal of wondering what else is going to go wrong, be delayed or require dangerous trimming knowing that one wrong snip will ruin the entire piece and force me to order a replacement.
Sorry Shelby, I should have ordered from you.
 
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