Like sand through the fiberglass…
Hours: 4.4 | Posted in Cowling & BafflesMore cowling work, always more cowling work. Though things are looking up, as I can see a path forward from here. Tonight I managed to reshape the taper of the top cowl to the right diameter, plane back the nose of the bottom cowl, and reshape that to the right diameter. There is the beginning of a consistent 1/4″ spinner gap now. I marked the areas that were over that 1/4″ (the right side was narrow, while the left was wide), and will build them out with some filler, then sand and shape again. I also have a few voids that opened up during sanding, that need to be filled. I feel like this is good progress.
With the nose work in progress, and needing to do a bunch of epoxy work, I decided to postpone that due to the time of day. Instead, I moved to the oil door, another spot that I’d been fearing. This turned out to be not a big deal. First, I trued up the edges of the oil door blank using a small square and a sanding board, then marked and sanded a radius at each corner. Located the hidden hinge in the proper spot, and drilled it to the cowling. Put the oil door in place and drilled it to the hinge, then adjusted the drill points because it was off (argh; the elongated holes will be epoxied shut). Formed the door more precisely to the curve of the cowling using a heat gun, then drilled the latches to the door. I’ll need to layup an additional ply of glass along the side edges of the cowling cutout, since the door rattles a bit; the geometry of the latches and required mounting location to clear the cutout edges require that the cowl be a bit thicker to latch firmly.
