Today I picked right back up with the fun of trying to hash out the junction between the cowl halves. After looking at some other build logs last night, I worked out a better idea for trimming the forward corners, which in turn allowed for me to make a much better attempt at nesting the spinner area.

This showed me a new problem: specifically, the material thickness in this area on the upper cowl is 1) not consistent, and 2) significantly thicker than the recessed mating area on the lower cowl. So I went to work removing material here; I sanded down the upper cowl mating area a bit, but decided to do the bulk of the removing on the upper cowl. So far, I’ve been through three or four iterations of removing material, smoothing the area out, and trial-fitting the halves together.

Things still aren’t fitting perfectly, but they’re a lot better. I can slide the junction almost all the way together:

But the junction still isn’t quite flush, as a picture from inside the spinner opening shows:

I’ve already surrendered to the fact that this mating area isn’t going to fit snugly at first – there’s just no way I’m going to accurately sand this stuff down to a precise fit. My goal is just to get it to a point where it nests properly, and then I figure I’ll cover one side with tape and mold release, then apply some epoxy-flox mixture and clamp it back together again to fill the gaps.

Similarly, the front corners aren’t exactly meeting beautifully. Maybe they’ll end up looking better once I’m really fitting the halves together, but I’m preparing myself for the possibility of needing to do some significant reshaping there to get things looking good.

OK, so…first order of business today was revisiting the aft flange of the upper cowl. As mentioned yesterday, while I did a lot of fine-tuning of the fit to the fuselage, I still wasn’t completely happy about it. So I spent even more time carefully sanding the flange to further tweak the fit. The good news was that things were close enough that I no longer needed to remove the cowl to sand it. With the spacer between the cowl and the prop spinner, the back of the cowl was pressed snug against the fuselage. That meant that I could wiggle the joint around to figure out where there was contact, then lift that area enough to sand it a bit with some 80 grit glued to a popsicle stick. By doing this, well, a bunch of times, I eventually got things looking really tight:

Since I was finally happy with the fit, it was time to move on to drilling the upper cowl to the hinge halves that retain it. To do this, the holes get laid out and initially drilled in the cowl, then later drilled in assembly with the hinges. As suggested in the construction manual, I laid out the rivets about 1” apart, after marking the ends of the hinge pieces on the cowl. A little work with the rivet fan and I had my holes taken care of:

I also took this opportunity to rough-cut the opening for the oil door; this opening also serves to allow access to the upper cowl hinge pines, so I needed it open for the upcoming work. I didn’t open this up all the way to the plans dimensions; I’m probably going to do something custom with the hinge and latch for this, so I’m leaving extra material for potentially working that out later.

Then the cowl went back onto the fuselage, and I very carefully got it positioned, then started drilling. My approach to managing the gap between the cowl and fuselage is to use that spinner spacer to hold the claw snug against the fuse, then I just manually held the hinge half in the rearmost position while drilling. The intent here was to use the bit of slop in the hinges to allow for moving the cowl forward for final fitting later on. About the only issue here was that while I could easily manipulate the hinge on the right side of the plane – thanks to that oil door opening – the left side was way more difficult. The end result is that I don’t have quite as much room to move the cowl forward on the left side, but I’ll still be able to do even more sanding on that later on to finalize the gap.

Anyway, at the end of all that I had the cowl fully checked to the hinge half: 

And with the cowl off, we can see those newly fitted hinge halves:

There was still more work to be done on these hinges, though; the cowl isn’t as thick as the material stickup in the fuselage, so there’s some shimming needed here to get a nice flush line between the cowl and the fuselage. The plans call for just doing a blanket .032” shim, but I noticed that the gap was more pronounced around the edges of the cowl, and less so in the middle. So I did some trial-and-error with some aluminum scraps; this resulted in using those .032” shims on the outside edges, but then closer to the middle .025” shims made for a better fit.

Once all that was laid up, I got to do the work of cutting the shims, drilling them in assembly with the hinge halves, and finally fitting everything back to the cowl. Once that was done, the cowl went back on – again – to verify that things lined up as expected. The fit still isn’t 100% perfect, but if I want to fine-tune this down the road, I should be able to do it just by adding a bit of micro to the cowl and sanding to fit.

OK, next up – it was time for the rest of the trimming on the upper cowl. With everything else in place, I could use some layout marks I already had just behind the spinner – marking the correct cut point to get things nice and symmetrical with the lower cowl – and lay out the cut lone for the bottom edge of the cowl. My approach for this was to use a laser level to first verify that my reference marks were appropriately level, and then to carry those marks around each side of the cowl.

I started with the fuselage in the level flight attitude – this would have given me a cowl split line parallel to the longerons – but that resulted in the level line dropping off the bottom edge of the cowl at the aft end. So I had to gradually lower the tail until the cut line carried the full length of the cowl. It’ll end up being a degree or two off from the longeron line, but I kind of doubt anyone will notice…

Then I got to go and carefully make Sharpie marks along the level line, along both sides of the cowl… while also making sure not to, you know, lase myself in the eyes:

Then, as with the last trim, I used masking tape to lay out the cut lines all the way around:

Which was followed by rough-trimming, sanding the cut lines close to the masking tape lines, and finally using a long sanding board to finish the entire cut line nice and straight. This was surprisingly not really a ton of work; unlike the aft cut line, which had to be carefully fitted to another part, in this case I’m creating the layout line, so there’s not so much trial-and-error. (That’ll come later when I trim the lower cowl to fit…)

OK, enough of the upper cowl…now it’s time for the real fun, the lower cowl. The lower half mostly butts against the upper cowl, except for the spinner area. Here, the lower cowl has an inset flange that need to fit snugly into the upper cowl…but that there’s no way to test-fit this intersection as provided, because the extra material the outboard cowl edges interferes:

So the strategy here is to carefully and gradually trim the forward outer portion of the lower cowl to hash out this nesting area. The marker line in the previous picture follows the edge of the flange, so that’s hypothetically where I’ll want to trim things here. Thing is, I don’t want to trim any further back than I have to, since I can’t know how what the overlap of the two halves will look until I can fit them together…aka not until I get the front to nest. It’s a sort-of maddening chicken-egg type problem.

The approach so far has been to slowly and conservatively remove material in this area, while repeatedly trial-fitting the halves. Eventually I should be able to creep up on a decent trial fit, but I’m not there yet. I got this far before deciding it was time to call it a night:

So this is where I’ll be picking up next time. I’ll probably need to rethink my localized trimming here to creep up on the fitment…that’s something to mull over for a while. As tedious as some of this is, though, it’s still pretty neat to see the cowl profile coming together.

Once again, this is a multi-day report; I actually started on this stuff yesterday afternoon. I’d actually put the upper cowl on and off a couple times over the preceding week, as I was thinking through my next move for the fitting process. I also swung by Home Depot this past Thursday to pick up a 2’x2’ piece of 1/4” plywood, to make a spacer between the cowl and prop spinner. That work got done yesterday – first, making a hole in the middle of the sheet to match the prop hub, then splitting the sheet into two pieces. The idea was that I could rest it on top of the hub for fitting.

Next up, it was time to start messing with the cowl itself. Before doing anything, I needed to get the fuselage into a level attitude, which meant finding the right combination of boxes and scrap lumber to raise the tail to the proper height. The good news here is that it’s a lot easier to lift the tail with the engine hanging out front – that’s really good since I’ve now put the tail on and off the boxes several times.

Anyway, with the fuselage leveled both front-back and side-side, I got my laser level set up to give me a horizontal reference line. This was mainly so I could similarly level the cowl side-side while doing the other positioning. Then I got to mess around with my adjustable supports up front to get the nose of the cowl where I wanted it relative to the spinner, as well as maintaining the side-side level I wanted. Then I checked, double-checked, triple-checked, and so on, until I was really satisfied that I had the location I wanted. Once that was done, I used the tape line I laid out on the fuselage, measuring 2” forward, and laid out the cut line for the back end of the cowl:

Next, I broke out the masking tape and laid a stripe along the marks to create a continuous reference line for the cut:

Then it was time to take a deep breath and make that first cut. I wanted to creep up on the final size, so I worked to make the cut about 1/8” or so shy of the actual cut line. Getting the final fit was always going to require a lot of iterative sanding, so no real reason to try and get super close on the first pass:

Now, the real fun part here is that before I could get to the iterative sanding, I first needed to install the hinge halves that will support the back of the upper cowl. Prior to trimming, it was resting on the fuselage, but now it would need to butt against the fuselage, and thus rest on the hinges. So starting this morning, I cut all the hinge pieces I’ll need around the cowl, then set about fitting the upper hinges to the firewall. This is kind of fun since the hinge needs to be bent to roughly the same profile as the fuselage before fitting, and then there’s just a lot of drilling in assembly. Then I cut the pins for these pieces, and pinned the other hinge halves in place.

Also, I forgot to take any pictures of this, I guess because I was so excited to lay the cowl in place and see how it looked.

Anyway, this got me into the fun iterative part. All told, this cowl probably went on and off the airplane fifteen or twenty times today. Lay it in place, evaluate the fit, figure out where the interference was, take it off, sand that area, lay it in place again…and so on. I was pleased to see that I started with only about a 3/16” gap from cowl to spinner, meaning that I had plenty of leeway to fine-tune the fit while getting the gap right. Eventually I worked up to fitting the plywood spacer between cowl and spinner while doing the fit-ups, and eventually I had a fit that I (mostly) liked at the firewall:

Up front, I’ve got a nice even gap between the cowl and spinner:

I think I’m still going to tweak that fit at the back a bit more tomorrow; there are a couple spots I’m still not completely happy with. Once that’s done, the next step will be to lay out the rivet holes on the cowl, then use those to drill through the cowl into the hinge and cleco everything together. That, in turn, will make the upper cowl stable enough that I can mark the horizontal trim lines along the bottom, and make those cuts. At least those won’t require a bunch of fitting, since they just need to be straight – the lower cowl will eventually get trimmed to match those cut lines.

The one thing that’s bothering me is that the hinge halves for the upper cowl have some slop in the fit. The plans specify undersize hinge pins for those, which are necessary in order to fit the curve of the upper fuselage. But that also means that the hinges don’t fit tight…and that means that it’s going to be hard to get the gap I want between the upper cowl and the forward upper skin. I don’t want a contact fit here; there will eventually be paint in that gap, and if it’s too tight the paint will get chipped removing and reinstalling the cowl.

My best guess for handling this is to allow the lower cowl – which will attach with full-size hinge pins – to do the primary locating work. It’ll be fixed in place, and the upper cowl will be fixed to it via the horizontal hinges that will join the halves. Maybe the best approach is to get the upper cowl fitting tightly to the fuse, drill the hinges such that the cowl can be pulled forward to establish the right gap, and then get everything fixed in place when I add the lower cowl.

We’ll see how this all works out over the next week or so, I suppose.

So, as implied by the title, today was all about getting set up for the joy of cowl fitting. I started this off last night by pulling out the line material that will be used to attach the cowl halves. This was in line with the first step of cowl fitting, per the instructions, being to cut and install the the hinge halves on the firewall. However, I ended up putting those back and delaying for later, mainly because I can’t really follow the instructions to the letter here. The main hangup is that I don’t (and won’t) have the forward upper skin riveted in place, which in turn precludes having those hinges riveted, since all these items are riveted in assembly.

Instead I moved on to a more fun problem, something I’ve been mulling over for the past few days. Briefly, the cowling halves are provided slightly long, and need to be cut to length in order to fit snugly against the firewall. The basic procedure for this is to lay out a line 2” aft of the firewall flange, lay the cowl on top so it overlaps the forward fuselage, and after doing all the fitting and positioning, measuring back 2” forward from that line lays out the initial cut line.

First problem: The firewall isn’t held in position unless that forward upper skin is installed. That’s not necessarily a show-stopper; I can cleco it in place, measure back from the firewall to mark the line, and then remove the checks so the cowl rests on the skin. But that leads to…

…the second problem, which is the right upper portion of the firewall. The left side is held securely in position by the skin, but the right side has a giant open spot where the forward baggage door will go. As provided, the skin didn’t have this piece cut out, but…I cut it out some time ago so I could match-drill that skin to the underlying structure. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t done that. If that piece wasn’t cut out, then this skin would hold the right side of the firewall securely as well.

Anyway, it’s water under the bridge, and I’m left with this setup. You might be able to imagine how that portion of the firewall has a lot of freedom of movement here:

To solve this problem, I decided to temporarily add the baggage door to the party. Actually fitting this piece is a whole procedure that apparently gives lots of builders fits, but all I needed it to do was serve as a sort of filler piece to position the firewall. In practice, the top of the door attaches to the forward upper skin and underlying structure with a length of piano hinge; for this purpose, I cut a piece of .063” to sit in place of that hinge and attach the door. That piece of scrap was first drilled to the hinge attach structure, then I worked on putting the door in place on the fuselage before drilling the door to the scrap piece.

While doing this, I reviewed the baggage door instructions for inspiration. It turns out that that procedure calls for a nontrivial usage of duct tape, which I took inspiration for. In order to hold the door in the right position for drilling, I added strips of duct tape on the forward side, which also served to pull the firewall into proper position. Between that, and some more strips of tape to hold the bottom edge of the door in place, I finally got the brace drilled, which fixed the door in place pretty well:

Next, I worked between the clecos to place the 2” guide line off the firewall flange, then added another strip of duct tape to really ensure the firewall wasn’t going to move. Finally, after going all the way around the firewall and making marks for the guide line, I put down a strip of masking tape all the way around, which will be my actual reference when it’s time to mark the cowling:

So that takes care of allowing the back end of the cowl to be positioned and marked – the next task is to allow for positioning the front end. If we just lay the cowl atop the engine, the front edge sits on the crank pulley and is far too low. So I created a couple of adjustable plungers which allow for carefully raising the front. These were made using scraps from my first instrument panel cut; each piece attaches to a baffle attach point on a cylinder, and then has a 1/4-20 tapped hole for a long bolt. The bolts are topped with rubber vacuum line caps so as not to damage the inside of the cowl. I also added jam nuts on each bolt, to ensure I could prevent the bolts from moving, as well as taking some load off the threads in the admittedly thin brackets:

Finally, it was time for a trial fit of the cowl to see how all this worked out. Mostly I wanted to make sure that those bolts up front were long enough to raise the cowl to the level needed…or if I was going to need to buy some longer ones. So while this is in no way a careful fitting, I did take the time to roughly align the cowl with the prop spinner:

In this position, I still have a little bit of bolt length left, so it looks like I’m in good shape here. For the final fitting, I’ll need a way to precisely space the cowl off the spinner backplate, as well as a way to establish that the cowl is level from left to right. Really, I just generally need to review the fitting instructions, so I have an idea of the big picture of what I’m doing. It’s probably not surprising that I want to quadruple-check everything I’m doing before I reach the point of actually trimming the cowl…