Brief Description: Bottom Cowl Aft Support Brackets
VANs instructions show a bottom cowl aft support bracket to hold up the area where to exhaust pipes exit the cowling. I don’t like their design and decided to fabricate my own support much like Carl Bell (an excellent builder I frequently refer to in the Kitlog posts when I don’t know what I’m doing…which is about half my build time). VANs (and Carl Bell) have you bend a plate to attach to the aft nose gear mounting supports with two AN-3 bolts. Making these very short bends and drilling matching holes into the back of the landing gear support is a challenge. I ended up making these holes oversized to get the AN-3 bolts into the support plate. Next, I fabricated a support assembly that bolts into the underside of the lower fuselage flange. Then, I attached 8 nutplates and will use special “washer-head screws” to attach the lower cowl to the support. Next, I fabricated a protruding insert which will fit into the original slots I cut into the lower cowl to allow it to slide over the nose gear. I will also prime and paint these with white enamel because this aft support will not get painted when the cowls get painted. Tomorrow, I will fabricate a similar support with insert which mounts onto the cowl slot in front of the nose gear and I'll include pictures of the brackets attached to the cowl and the fuselage.
