Al Gardner from Yuma drove over with his son-in law Dean to compare notes this am. It was great to talk to another builder Al has built a -9 and put 800 hours on it. So he's an experienced builder! I think I'm over the hump on the cowl fitting, Finished fitting the Left side, and then taped everything up really good and layed out the rivet pattern on the vertical hinges, and drilled and clecoed them. After seeing how much the upper cowl shifted when drilling I was REALLY nervous about doing this. But it looks like it may have worked out OK. After drilling and clecoing both sides I removed the duct tape and it didn't seem to shift any !!!!!. In fact with all of the tape off and the front supports that were clecoed to the upper cowl it didn't seem to mave any . WHEW!! The last thing of the day was to try and repair the gap at the aft end of the upper cowl. I cut some strips of .020 from the Bundel that Van's suppllies and then match drilled and clecoed these to the underside of the cowling to use as a sort of 'mold' I mixed up some flox and colodial silica, and applied it trying to make sure that the bead I put down was wide enough and overlapped the seam and had no voids/air bubbles in it. I'll let it cure good tonight and then sand it tomorrow. A lot of work to go to for 3/64" but you do what you gotta do!.
The Upper and Lower Cowl halves are FIT!!!!
Add Flox bead to close gap on the aft end of the upper cowl
You building What??!!! You're not REALLY going to fly it are you?????
