I got a late start today having returned from Wilmington mid-afternoon and then having to give my friend’s daughter a ride to some of her friends’ house.

But I did get another round of tweaking the top cowl oil check door in… by getting the aft door securing wire tube marked (pic 1) and then cut out (pic 2).

With the door set back as firmly closed as possible, and secured in place with Gorilla duct tape (no spring!) I then proceeded to reset the wire-securing brass tube in place with flox.  I then covered that all up with 2 plies of carbon fiber, and peel plied the layup.

The clamp is to keep the wire pressed down against the inside top of the cowling, as I have the wire reversed and inserted just enough to keep the door configuration set.

I had cut out 3 plies of carbon fiber a couple of days ago in my assessing how to get as much clearance as possible with my current top cowling-to-prop spinner configuration.

At this point, the only options I really have left is a radical top cowl backend rebuild, or a more finessed approach of adding a few plies on top to then remove a few plies on the bottom… or actuality simply sanding the inside edge at a beveled angle to remove a good 0.06-0.08″ of cowling edge to keep it away from my prop spinner.  That should get me back to about a 0.36″ gap… which is about as good as I’m going to squeeze out of this setup.

In my quest to continually add more weight to this bird, I also addressed the meeting point (AKA “firewall”) of the sharp colliding angles of the canopy/D-deck on the forward side (left in pic below) and the aft flange that is aligned with the flow of the top cowl. It’s not too bad on the right, but on the left side I have a decent little dip, or trench, that I don’t want to simply trowel in a thick trough of micro.  I decided a judicious application of glass here would be good to fill the trough a bit, then allow the micro to be used in its clean-up role.

Here’s the firewall-located dip on the turtledeck:

I grabbed a small length of 3″ wide UNI spar cap tape, cut off 6″ long by about half the width of the tape (1.5″).  I then split that into thirds and cut 1/3 to to 4.5″ long and the last 1/3 to 3″ long (sorry, I should have grabbed a pic).  I pre-pregged the UNI so that ALL the ends started at one side [thick at bottom, narrow at top] and then wet it out.  In addition, I cut a single ply of BID about 6.7″ long x 1.5″ wide to cover the UNI.

Once the UNI strands were wet out, I laid them up in the trough, got them oriented and smoothed out fairly even, then covered them with the 1 ply of BID.  I then peel plied the layup.

I was trying to get to work on the prop spinner to get it cut to allow mounting over the prop and secured to the flow guide.  I was able to get the prop taped up to protect it as I shape the prop spinner, with the upcoming requisite on & off iterations.  But alas, I ran out of time since I needed to go pick up my friend’s daughter and take her back home, and then run to Jess’s place for dinner.

I added this shot above not just to display my masterful tape job, but also if you look on the top right of the prop hub you’ll see a bit of a delam.  The bottom left looks about the same.  There was a minor one on the top left that I hit with some epoxy and peel plied it, then tape.  This was after I sent these pics to Gary Hertzler, in requesting his advice on how to remedy these delams.  He responded that I should simply use epoxy under the delam (as pretty much any other delam) and keep it closed up during cure.

So I loaded up my delam/air bubble syringe with white vinegar and once cleaned out, I’ll attack these delams after I get the prop spinner configured.