I had another social event that kept me out of the shop for nearly half the day, but I was still able to get some stuff knocked out.

First off, the top cowling’s oil check door has been a gnawing issue since after I set the door in place and attached it to the hinge.  The hinge construction gives it very little flex, and with the door having compound curves, attaching it to the hinge assembly greatly disrupted the door’s contour and how it flowed with the surface of the cowling.

Over the past few days I’ve been assessing and resetting how the door is secured to the cowling, but those are just symptoms —albeit important— but the core of the issue was the door-to-hinge attachment.  I had to remedy that to remedy any further oil check door fitting issues.

So I drilled out all the rivets and hit the hinge assemble with the heat gun enough to allow me to pry the hinge off the door.  I then heated up the door a bit and flexed it back into its original position, which it seemed amenable to.

I then put the oil check door back into position on the top cowling, weighed it down (note the aft inboard corner specifically getting weighed down as well) and heated it up a good bit with the heat gun.

I then took my friend’s daughter out for a late lunch and went to an arcade for about 4 hours.

Upon my return I removed the weights off the oil check door and was pleased to see that it was pretty much back to original shape and configuration… as in NOT all wonky in relation to the upper cowling.

After some more checks I realized that even though I had reset the forward and aft securing wire tubes attached to the top cowling, now the door was a little proud due to the door’s attached crosstube.  In short, something had to give and I figured I would attack the one remaining tube and get this oil check door snugged up tight —on the outboard side at least— in its position on the cowling.

With my Fein saw and Dremel tool I proceeded to remove nearly all of the cross tube attached on the underside of the oil check door.  I confirmed that the forward tube alignment was good and snug, it was just the aft side causing the door to sit a little proud, or high.

Now, I took a bit of gamble here in that I was working in the blind on resetting the door’s cross tube in place with flox.  Yet another reason I kept the front side attached.  I greased up the securing wire and added flox to the door’s cross tube before setting it in place and running the wire through all the securing tubes.  This has the door secured in its position [sans hinge] with the door cross tube floxed into position.  Then, to ensure the door tube cures with the oil check door as tightly in position as possible to the cowling, I weighed down the door again… and also that aft inboard corner as well.

I then left the door to cure overnight.

My goal for today was to get the prop spinner cut for the prop blades and have it on the bird, but that didn’t happen.  I did lay the groundwork though by getting a good start on creating the blade cutout template, with this being my first attempt.

I then refined my prop spinner blade hole cutout template with version #2.  Here I actually have the cutout configured to allow the spinner to get mounted around the prop blades.  Since I had taped thin cardboard to the prop blades to protect them during this process, I needed to get the clearance gaps pretty tight up next to the taped blade surface…

Which I was better able to do with template version #3.  It was getting quite late in the evening, and tomorrow I’ll pull the cardboard from the prop blades and simply use only tape before doing my final template version.

This shot of the prop spinner cutout template version #3 also provides a good shot of the “razor” trimmed 3-ply carbon fiber layup that I just completed, and the top cowl aft edge sanding that it allowed me to do.  Except for a few small spots, I’m back to 3/8″ clearance between spinner flow guide and cowling.

My final task of the evening was making up a template for the front-of-prop-blade gap filler piece that will cover that exposed area.   Here’s version #1.

Followed by version #2, which offers a bit more coverage of the gap.  I’m sure there’s a few more versions of these templates before I take the ‘knife’ to the prop spinner.

But it was late, so I called it a night.

Pressing forward!