OK, time to get these cowl halves split again. The portion forward of the covers was pretty easy; a hacksaw blade slips nicely into the gap, so I could cut right up to the cover. Then I went inside and used a Sharpie to mark a cut line from there back to the back edge of the cover. The good old oscillating saw let me make shallow cuts along those lines. Then I got a flat blade screwdriver into the cut and was able to drive out the covers, and finally finish the cut with the hacksaw blade as needed:
Next up is adding nutplates for those screw holes, then removing excess fiberglass. I need an opening so I can actually access the pins to split the cowl. I decided to just make this opening the entire length of the cover cutout – after all, I only really need the material to locate the nutplates, right? (more on this decision later…) After that trimming, plus the requisite cleanup with sandpaper and such, I rejoined the cowl halves for a fit check:
Then I figured I’d test-fit the final covers to see how things looked. These are a bit smaller than the dummy covers; this is intentional to leave a paint gap. Interestingly, the right cover (shown below) ended up not exactly centered in the cutout. Not entirely sure how this happened:
A different angle shows how far the cover is inset on the top side; this is expected, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post:
It’s kind of amusing the decision I made yesterday which was intended to avoid working with a bunch of micro here, because it looks like I’ll be doing that after all, thanks to that odd final fitment issue (the other side is similar, though not as bad). I think what I’ll do is first sand the area to match the contour and fix the inset issue, using the dummy covers again. I assume that this will yield an irregular gap, which I can then fix in the usual fiberglass fashion: stuff in a bunch of micro and sand, sand, sand. We’ll see.
Late-breaking update: I went back out and decided to try fitting the dummy covers in place. I had the thought that maybe somehow the screw holes and/or nutplates ended up slightly out of location, and that was what caused the real covers to look so off. If so, then when I popped the dummy covers back in place, I should see misalignment with the screw holes.
I did not, in fact, see any such misalignment, and I was able to screw the dummy covers in place just as easily as the real ones. So now I’m wondering if this is a visual effect from the covers not matching the cowl contour. I guess the upshot is that regardless, my first move is to get to work sanding those contours, and then I can decide from there what I want to do next.