6/28/2009
Today was another awesome aviation day! My dad and I flew over to a fly-in breakfast in Macomb, IL with Jack and Roger, in their RV-7 and Super Cub, respectively. Rob and Christine also flew over in there RV-7...fun morning. That fun turned in to another kind of fun...back to the hangar, fitting the cowl. I decided to redo the top cowl fitting since I had a gap that I didn't like on the left side. It was a simple matter of making new hinge lengths, and drilling them again with the cowl clamped in place better, using the holes we drilled yesterday. The really frustrating part about the second try, is now I have about a 1/4" slant in the cowl, meaning the right inlet is about 1/4" higher than the left. I may be able to work that out down the road, but for now I'm moving on.
With the top cowl removed, the next thing to do was to match up the front of the cowl to get the spinner opening and the inlet ring openings concentric. Here's how I clamped them together to start out...
We can make some observations here...first, the spinner ring is 1/4" too tall, which also makes the inlet rings off the same. The gaps between the cowl halves are awful, but it's nothing a bunch of fitting and sanding won't take care of. The bottom cowl was much worse than the top cowl as far as starting with a somewhat level seam. The top cowl was almost spot on, just a bit of sanding with the 3' sanding bar, and it was more or less good. The bottom was ALL OVER THE PLACE...LOTS of cutting and sanding to be done...
Cut to a couple hours later, and I think five times off/on/off the airplane, and I am to this point. The inlet rings are 5 1/4" circles...
...and the spinner ring is dead on at 13", and 1/4" spacing.
We also made the trim at the aft end vertical sides of the bottom cowl to bring it nearly to the firewall. I have to sand it yet to see where I'm at, but it should be close. I need to figure out when the best time would be to try and correct my slanting cowl, but next time I plan to work on the vertical hinges for the bottom cowl, then figure out the bottom and side fitting. SLOW and STEADY with this...
If it weren't for my dad's help this weekend, I probably would've gotten frustrated to the point of walking away from this thing for a few days...it's no picnic, this cowl stuff.
I also re-dried my desiccant plugs today...one was still blue, and three pink...
5.0 hours