Today was mostly spent on the lower cowl with some time on ensuring the upper cowl fit well. I removed the remaining baffles so that the upper cowl would lay completely down in addition to removing the exhaust pipes to fit the lower. Everything went fairly smooth with the lower cowl. One of the things I did was to use a piece of scrap AL to make a bridge for the aft part of the lower cowl where the slot is cut out. This is to help with not only stability but also to ensure that the geometry isn't twisted while fitting it. This must be done before cutting the slot to ensure proper alignment. I also spent some time in cleaning up the intersection joints between the cowls. While the Showplanes cowl is vastly superior to the Van's cowls, mine was an early version that had some flaws. I got it at a discount so nothing bad to say about that as I knew there would be additional work. I also cut the mating line in the top cowl to final length. The line is determined by level in flight and not on the ground. This can be found with a digital level placed on the door jambs which in my case was 2 degrees. I then found the approximate middle between the two cowls and cut a two degree line from the front to back.
