I started off quickly brushing on a couple rounds of flat clear coat to the areas I hand painted around the GIB headrest & D-deck gap cover… to get that knocked out.

Actually today was all about getting the left inboard exhaust pipe mating surface trimmed at the proper angle to seat against the 90° elbow portion of the exhaust pipe that is bolted onto the cylinder #1 exhaust port.

This is one trimming session of 3 total that I did, after a good 10+ minutes of assessing height, angle, standoff from spinner flow guide, etc. in between each round of trimming.

Here we have the final trim of the left inboard exhaust pipe.  After I dialed in the angle and position, I texted James to see if he would be available tomorrow to weld this up.  I’ll note that there are actually 2 welds that need to happen here, since under that ring of black tape is another spot where the pipe is cut in two.

BTW, James did say he was available so the plan is to get this exhaust pipe welded up tomorrow… Hoo-ah!

After another 45 minutes assessing the exhaust pipes and upcoming aft engine baffle construction, I closed up shop and headed out to dinner with Jess to relax for a bit.  Just before dinner I finally picked up some #6 SS hex button head screws for the GIB headrest & D-deck gap cover.

Upon my return home later, I mounted the GIB headrest & D-deck gap cover with the screws I had just acquisitioned a few hours earlier.  Here’s how it all looks.  Not too bad, in my opinion!

And some closer up shots each side.  Can you pick out the areas that were hand painted?  Hopefully not!  I do need to still do some minor sanding and tweaking around the edges, as well as fix the rough edge on the one side… but overall?  I’m pretty darn pleased with how it turned out.

I then spent a good half hour plus removing the tape and cleaning off the gunk, as well as cleaning up the mating edges of the different left inboard exhaust pipe pieces in prep for them getting welded up tomorrow.  I then called it a night.