Working my cowl halves for good fitment prior to fitting them to the airplane. My goal has been to achieve good nesting of the flanges at the inboard inlets and I've been removing material around the entire mating surfaces of the upper and lower half to bring them closer together. I'm at the point now where the circular opening is now slightly shorter than it is wide (by about 1/4"). If I keep removing material to better nest the flanges, it will only serve to make the spinner hole more of an oval since the width is fixed. I have sufficient flange extension from the lower half to the upper half to mount the 3 nutplates so I'm wondering if I should just fill in the remaining gap areas instead of continuing to sand away. Looking for recommendations.
Van's Air Force
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Initial Cowl Fitting
- Thread starter Girraf
- Start date
I think aesthetically, oval would look very cool. But it would need to be oval enough to look like it was done intentionally.
Yes you should fill the gaps. I would do that though when the cowling half's are mounted to the fuselage. Tape up the lower flange, rough up the upper, and fill with either a pure flox mix, or a mix of flox and micro. That fill needs to be tough as it will be fitted on/off often and you dont want your fill and paint chipping.
wirejock
Well Known Member
Agree. Fit the cowl to the fuse first. Then the minor stuff.
Check my blog. I wrote a three part article on fitting the cowl and mine happens to be a 7A so they may help. David's EZ-Cowl is the best and easy to fabricate.
Whatever you do, don't cut anything off the firewall edge or the two horizontal edges before starting.
Check my blog. I wrote a three part article on fitting the cowl and mine happens to be a 7A so they may help. David's EZ-Cowl is the best and easy to fabricate.
Whatever you do, don't cut anything off the firewall edge or the two horizontal edges before starting.
