9 cubic foot baggage compartment

It's not an especially difficult job, but you will need to devote some time to it. I spent about 21 hours on the project. split over 5 days, so I wasn't really in a big rush.
 

• I purchased a used baggage compartment from Vernon that was complete except for the wooden floorboards. The used parts (and the STC does specifically approve the use of "salvaged" parts) were $450 and I purchased a very nice 4'x8' sheet of 1/4" (actually 6mm)  Okoume plywood for about $120. Turns out I would have been fine with a half sheet though.
• I stripped, primed, and painted all of the metal components using normal hardware store supplies. Maybe $45 all told. 
• Vernon sent me all of the nuts, bolts, and screws from the previous installation but I elected to use all new hardware. That all cost about $60 with shipping and there is a parts list here .
• Besides normal hand tools and a cordless drill, you will need a 6x32 thread tap. I already had a  full set , but for this job you're only threading four shallow aluminum locations so a cheap tap  like this will do nicely. You'll also need a set of numbered drill bits. If you're not too precious about your tools there's a decent but cheap set available here . So unless you elect to buy more expensive stuff, less than $50 worth of tools.

The biggest part of the job is removing the seat back. If you've never done this before, I think it's only four bolts for the seat back and another four bolts on the front edge of the seatbelt tiedown triangles. Then you pull the hinge pins and remove a couple more bolts to get the seat pan out. I left my voltage regulator in place with the seatbelt triangles still attached to their rearmost mounting rod and had no problem working around them.

If your window welts are in bad shape this is the PERFECT time to replace them since you now have full assess to remove the inner skins and access the entire side window rail system. Also, if your side window skins or seat pan have cracks this is a great time to patch them. You can get a piece of aluminum and cherry pop rivets to do this.

The baggage compartment itself went in without a hitch. The only extra steps I had to take were to cut out a little extra material to get clearance around my 3-point seatbelt STC, but this was quite obvious what was needed and also easily accomplished. My master switch relocated with no change to wiring but one of my strobe light wires needed to be lengthened to reach the new location. That's what I get for cleaning up all the "excess wire length" last year!

 

Thanks for the info.  I am looking to replace the worn and ripped canvas bag    How involved is the change over to the 9 cu ft space?   Also, costs?   
Mike.  

Warren is correct. In fact, the STC paperwork anticipates this. One of the last steps is to apply a "Maximum Baggage Capacity" placard - in that step you're instructed exactly how to compose the placard text depending on your Ercoupe model.

If you have a copy of the type Certif you can see for your model how much you can put back, there. TC 718 or TC 787. to know your Coupe C to M10 have a copy at hand !!!    (BOTH ARE HERE UNDER ( DOCUMENTS )

As Larry said, the max baggage capacity is 65 pounds.

I have a Weight & Balance spreadsheet, and I can't make it go out of CG range with any combination of fuel/occupants/baggage unless I start doing things like, two heavy pilots, full baggage, empty wing tanks, and half empty fuselage tank. Even then, it's an inch out beyond aft CG.

At that point, you're dealing with the assumption that baggage weight is evenly distributed throughout the baggage area. If you stack the heavy items towards the front you're back in CG.

For the future, I'd like to get approval for a EarthX battery instead of replacing the heavy Concorde lead-acid battery. That would remove 19 pounds from just below the forward edge of the baggage area, which would shift the empty CG just enough to make it more or less impossible to misload the aircraft.