Started fitting the top and bottom cowl. There is a lot of contradictory information on VAF about the cowls, which basically means there are a number of legitimate ways to arrive at a fitted cowling.
I started by generally fitting both halves to the spinner aft bulkhead, marked and trimmed each half to overlap the fuselage skin 1" behind the firewall. This way I can cleco to the FW but if I make a mistake I can still correct matters. The bottom half must be trimmed to clear the fuel tank vents and transponder/ADBS antennas on the fuse underside.
With both halves trimmed they're back in place, loosely held initially with straps. I aligned the top cowl carefully with a Ryobi (Home Depot) laser level and shims around the spinner bulkhead. Then with the help of a flashlight shining it from inside the engine compartment, drill and cleco the top cowl.
Align laser level straight down prop and canopy to aid in marking equal distance each side
Align top cowl level, drill and cleco shims to spinner bulkhead
