I am using the Joel Milloway glare shield modification on my plane. I have installed the instruments and avionics into the instrument panel, and did a trial fitting of the panel into the airplane. On doing this I discovered that, with the glare shield in place, the panel is now tilted and aiming almost directly at the center of my chest while seated in the front seat. The Garmin 496 GPS is installed at the bottom of the panel in an Airgizmo dock. I powered up the GPS and discovered that the orientation of the screen is not optimal for good viewing, it is tilted down too far.
With some experimentation I determined that I need to tilt the panel slightly tip-back to make the GPS optimally viewable (is that a correct word string?) To do this requires that the glare shield be modified. The modification involved cutting the shield from side to side from the support tube relief spaces around the glare shield circumference to the bottom edge where the shield meets the boot cowl. a wedge-shapped piece then needs to be inserted into the shield to bring the bottom edge of the shield rear-ward to allow the panel to tilt away from the pilot at the top.
This process took longer than expected, and involved using West Systems epoxy and fibreglass cloth to build and install the wedge inserts. I will also have to re-apply the fabric covering on the glare shield as I had to remove the original material to perform the modification.
