Finish: Cowling. Reshaping.

As I think about painting and/or wrapping the plane in vinyl, I started to do some prep work on the cowl.  One item that needed to be done was fixing the misalignment on the front:  The top cowl half sits just a bit behind the bottom cowl half.

So I marked off the area that needed to be evened up, scuffed it and protected the areas around it, in prep for filling with epoxy.

I mixed up some epoxy with flox and cab-o-sil and applied the mixture, using peel-ply overlapping the bottom cowl, pulled tightly, to force conformation of the area to match the bottom cowl.

Following sanding, it didn't look too bad, but I still didn't like the shape, specifically how the top half's curve seemed a little off now.

So try #2 (I feel like everything I do on this plane takes two or three tries) shows my attempt at redoing the curve at the top.

Following sanding, it actually came out pretty good.

I then applied some Evercoat Easy Sand to fill the pin holes and even up the flat spots. Even though that layer is very thin, I don't know how smart that was because Easy Sand can break off under stress. We'll see how it does under the relentless onslaught of insects before I commit to it prior to painint/vinyl.

Finish: Cowling. Oil door complete.

I needed to add a large spacer to the COWL-00005A Oil Door Hinge so that the COWL-00004 Oil Door would sit at the correct level against the cowl.

I didn't like the gap around the oil door on the cowl.  So my friend went to work to reduce that gap.

First, the gap is filled with flox.

Then it's slowly filed away to get a tighter fit.  The astute will also notice I used flush quarter-turn fasteners for the oil door, similar to my upper cowl.  These little fasteners are from SkyBolt.

Finish: Cowling. Inlet ramps installed.

After I trimmed the inlet ramps, my friend completed the installation of them on to the top cowl.  This is not a complicated process, so there isn't much to describe here.

Here he is affixing them with epoxy, mixed with cotton flox.  The astute will notice that I mislabeled left and right on the ramps.

Letting the layup cure.

Completed.

Finish: Cowling. Bottom cowl completed.

Unlike for the top cowl, the bottom cowl required two sets of hands as gravity is, well, a downer.

Following several hours of filing the aft edges to get a good fit against the forward edge of the fuselage's skins (requiring exactly 19 on-and-off placements of the bottom cowl), the aft hinge rivet holes could be drilled.

Rather than follow plans and remove the top cowl, we chose to tape the bottom cowl in place with the top cowl also in place.  Coupled with the two cleco'd points near the spinner, we believed this helped stabilize and lock in the bottom cowl.

My friend had a great idea to ensure the side edges of the bottom cowl have a good tight fit against the top cowl:  With the cowl securely taped in place, he propped open the side of the bottom cowl and carefully sanded the edge down to get a great fit.  

The hinges are then match drilled.  It turns out that I drilled the side hinges in the upper cowl at a location slightly too high on those holes towards the forward edge of the cowl.  In fact, the edge distances were violated in several places.  So I will need to fill in those holes, replace the hinges and redrill the upper cowl side hinges.

Next we coated the bottom (and top) cowl pieces with epoxy, per plans, to make it impervious to oil.  This was aided by dissolving the epoxy in acetone and swirling, troweling and brushing the epoxy over the interior surface.  It's interesting to note that even though a very thin layer of epoxy was applied, both the upper and lower cowl pieces are noticeably heavier as a result.

The nutplate holes behind the spinner were drilled.  You'll note I have an extraneous cleco inbetween the two holes.  This is because when I originally lined up the cowl pieces, I had to drill another set of holes since I didn't like my original fitment.

Here are the cowl pieces mounted on the airframe.  The upper cowl side hinge isn't completed for reasons stated above.

Though this really belongs in Section 46A, I included it here as it's appropriate to do so.  This is the bottom cowl closeout (FF-00003A) being match drilled.

The bottom of the cowl is held down to the forward edge of the fuselage skin with screws.  This requires using a F-14133 Cowl Attach Plate as a template to find the holes that lead into the associated nutplates.

Finally, the bottom cowl heat shielding was placed by my friend.  The sheen of the thin epoxy layer is apparent.

Finish: Cowling. Upper cowl mounting completed.

First the two cowl halves are aligned and match drilled.

I didn't want to use hinges at the top cowl since they would be somewhat difficult to remove and reports of eyelet breakage and burnt appendages have surfaced.  So I decided to use quarter turn fasteners from SkyBolt.  First, the scalloped flanges are positioned prior to match drilling (left).  It's worth noting that with 3" spacing, I could fit 13 flanges but with 2.5" spacing, I could achieve 16.  So I chose to go with 2.5" spacing.  The flanges need to be bent to follow the profile of the firewall top (right), thus each flange was numbered according to its position.  Also, as can be seen, I cut off 0.5" on the joggle of the flanges.  That wasn't necessary.  It's worth noting that the F-14134A Cowling Hinge Shim caused the cowl to sit too low when using the quarter turn fasteners.  So I removed the shim.

Shown below is following match drilling of the flanges into the skin/firewall.  The paper was just to prevent swarf from accumulating in engine parts.

Here are the two outboard-most flanges showing how well they ended up being positioned relative to the start of the side hinges.

With the flanges now cleco'd in position, the upper cowl can be supported on its aft edge.  Thus, after it was placed, plumb bobs, a straight edge and a digital level were used to ensure a level cowl, as outlined in the plans.

Since the aft edge of the cowl has not yet been trimmed, the upper cowl sits very far forward (left).  After trimming the aft edge (by removing the cowl, trimming and replacing the cowl exactly 28 times), the requisite 3/8" clearance at the spinner is achieved as indicated by the very loose fitment of an AN3 bolt in the gap on each side (right).

These two images illustrate how careful I was to ensure the aft edge fit the edge of the skins following filing.  I suggest making a mark, as I did in the right image, on the cowl to indicate where the edge profile of the upper forward skin changes from vertical to angling forward.  This will help ensure you file the associated notch in the upper cowl properly.

SkyBolt includes little cleco adapters that you tape into the holes of the flanges so that you can drill through the cowl to insert a few clecos into the flanges.  You can see a few of those adapters in the picture below.  However, the cowl is very thick, so locating exactly where to drill those holes is nearly impossible since the light scatters so much.

So I opted to tape the cowl in place (not shown in the picture below)...

...then, using the flashlight, I would determine the approximate location of where I should drill holes into the cowl for the fasteners (left and right top).  I would then blindly drill a hole (left bottom) and carefully enlarge and adjust its center with the unibit to match the proper location (right bottom).

Eventually, all holes were drilled (left) and each grommet was inserted into the holes, followed by the fasteners (right).

A fastener inserted.

The flanges where then primed and the receptacles were riveted in (left).  Then the flanges were cleco'd back into position (right).

The cowl was placed and the quarter turns were locked (left).  Next, the pins were pulled (center).  The masking tape was included to ensure the receptacle anti-lock pins didn't fall out.  And finally, the receptacles were set (right).

Upper cowl mounting completed.  Only the oil door remains.

It's worth noting that, with the quarter turn fasteners, the F-14134A-L/R Cowl Hinge Shims caused the upper cowl to sit too low where it abuts the F-01471 Forward Top Skin.  I omitted the shims.