Brief Description: Cowl work and firewall nutplates
Kept working with the cowl fit today. Decided to put the cowl on and install as many pins as far as I could and the let the day’s heat stretch it to fit. Last week when I put most of the pins for the cowl in they all went in really hard, but after few days of temperature changes, the cowl fit MUCH better; removing the pins was easy, so I’m hoping that will be the case with all the pins I put in today.
I also made the cut outs for the oil cooler, inlet ports and the exhaust. Cutting the cowl with the Dremel tool and cut off wheel is a snap. One thing I noticed is that the inlet ports are not the exact same size -there is a barely-noticeable, but definite difference in their sizes.
Looking at other builder’s sites, I read where someone installed nut plates for all the items that mount to the firewall to make removal easier. So today, since I actually had help, my youngest daughter and I removed all the nuts for all the stuff mounted to the firewall and installed nut plates. Much better. I also re-installed the fuel tank and I installed the last two inspection ports on the aft fuselage. Unlike how I installed these on the wings, I did not indent the skin for these round inspection ports. But I did install nut plates instead of using sheet metal screws.
