Today was mainly about deciding the final install configuration for the oil cooler.  On the outboard side of the oil cooler I will be mounting the lower flange to the bottom cowling mounting flange on the left wing.

Since there’s only about 1/2″ of visible cowling between the inboard edge of the left wing’s bottom flange for the lower cowling and the outboard opening for the oil cooler, I am adding about a 0.2″ flange to drive the 3x #10 CS screws up through the reinforced flange to attach the outboard lip of the oil cooler.  Yes, you may need to read that twice (if you’re that interested).

The bottom line is that both in bulk and width I need to reinforce the lower flange of the left wing (the lower cowling mounting flange that is) to provide enough meat to drive 3x CS screws UP into the flange of the oil cooler, where awaiting these 3 screws will be three K1000-3 platenuts, or variants thereof.

After making a cardboard template, I then transferred the shape onto a piece of 1/16″ thick G10 Garolite phenolic.  I then drilled holes into the G10 extension for flox grips, and also dulled the entire piece with sandpaper for a good epoxy grip.  Finally, I cleaned up the piece with Acetone.

I then prepped the left wing’s lower flange with tape and cleaning for both floxing on the extension and for glassing.

I then floxed on the G10 extension and wetted out the area for a 3-ply BID layup.

Here’s BID ply #2 getting laid up to secure the G10 extension.

Here we have all 3 plies of BID laid up over and on the G10 extension.  I then peel plied the layup.

I’ll remind you that this is pretty much the configuration I’m looking for in my oil cooler install… and that I serendipitously found this in a FaceBook post from Burrall Sanders.

I then spent a good hour both pinpointing the exact center of my top cowling oil check door —based on the position and angle of the oil level tube— and brainstorming different variations of possible oil check door sizes and opening configurations.

Jess had been down in Florida for a number of days, and I hadn’t seen her in almost a week, so I called it an early evening on the build and went out with her for a night out.

Tomorrow I’ll be back onto both the oil cooler install and the top cowling oil check door install as well.