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Steves S-20 Build Site.
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Date: 1-21-2019
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Number of Hours: 5.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Cowl Details
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I had the cowl all trimmed and fit up. It was really close, but I still spent some time to get all the gaps consistent and straight. My target was a 1/16" gap along all the adjoining areas to allow some space for paint thickness and some relative movement without paint damage. It was a lot of install/mark/remove/sand/repeat, but I am happy with the way it came out.
The cowl attach strips along the rear of the cowl are 1" wide, while the joggles along the length of the cowl are trimmed to 3/4". I drilled all my fastener holes at 1/2", which resulted in centered holes along the rear strips, but the holes in the joggle strips were closer to the edge than I wanted. This meant that when I increased their diameter to 5/16" per the instructions there would be very little material around these holes. To fix this I drilled a hole in a small piece of aluminum and used a forestner bit to enlarge the holes on the outer cowl to 1/4", with the larger hole offset to be tangent to the existing 1/8" hole. This moved all the fasteners along the cowl side down 1/8", which was sufficient to provide plenty of material for the 5/16" clearance holes on the inner cowl.
After I was satisfied with the fit and the holes were all drilled, I cleaned all the mold release off with mineral spirits and acetone, and then sanded the gel coat with 180 grit and a rubber block. I was able to sand out most of the imperfections, but will need to fill a couple, along with the countersunk rivets that hold the inner oil door plate in place.
The cowl has been more work than I expected, and it is exciting to be nearing the paint stage.
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Moving the cowl fastener holes down 1/8".
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Sanded gel coat
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Won't be white much longer..
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