I started out today by spending a bit of time straightening and angling the flat piece of the hinge that mounts to the oil check door (part with rivet holes).  The hinge gap on this flat piece towards the aft end of the door was a bit more than the front side, which was pretty much pressed firmly against the door.  Again, since the hinge is aluminum getting mounted to carbon fiber, I needed a buffer piece of BID in between to keep any galvanic corrosion from occurring over time.

So I simple added a couple of BID plies and stepped them so that they were thicker on the aft end, at the very slight gap betwixt door hinge and door (I actually added a triangular filler ply of BID, so officially 4 plies at the very aft end).  After wetting out the BID, I then slathered on some as-wet-as-feasible flox and floxed the hinge back onto the oil check door.  I’ll note that the hinge spring is in place, and since the door wire catch was in place as well as the door being firmly taped closed with Gorilla duct tape… installing that spring was no small feat!

I let the epoxy/flox cure for about 30 minutes as I cleaned up the excess oozing flox from around the flat hinge piece edges.  With the hinge refloxed to the door, I mounted the top cowl with all the CAMLOCS and screws installed and again placed weights on the oil check door to keep it as tightly pressed to the top cowling as possible.  I then left it to cure.

I spent the next couple of hours slowly dialing in the fit of the prop spinner by carefully removing any material that kept it from seating on the flow guide properly, or didn’t allow enough clearance with the respective prop blades.

Once the prop spinner prop blade opening clearances were good, I got to work on the front-of-blade gap filler pieces.  I had assumed (yes, we all know what “assume” means!) improperly that my buddy Dave Berenholtz would be using a Silver Bullet, and/or never gave it any serious thought.  The bottom line is while he has the same prop spinner, his prop configuration is such that the gap filler piece is much narrower than mine.

Since I based my dimensions off of his, my resulting 9-ply gap filler piece stock layup ended up being too narrow and too tall overall.  It should have been about an inch less in height and about 2.5″ wider.  Nonetheless, I could clearly get at least one of the  front-of-blade gap filler pieces out of it, so after finalizing the template I marked up the first one (pic 1) and cut it out (pic 2).

The longer side of this gap filler piece (lower in pic below) did not work out well on the first side, and with the overall opening just a hair narrower (about 0.050″) on the other side, I transferred the #1 gap filler piece above to the other side (#2) and fitted it into place.

Now, although the spinner curves a bit more as it departs the junction with the flow guide, I decided to check out how the other front-of-blade gap filler piece would turn out by simply cutting it out of my 9-ply stock… only in reverse to keep it as close to the front side of the stock as possible.  Thus, I marked up the second (new #1) prop gap filler piece.

And cut it out and fitted it into place.  Not perfect, but not bad.  Which is the exact descriptor that I will offer up for this entire prop spinner install effort.

Here we have the prop spinner installed, with the prop blade openings cut with good (or too good… read on) clearances.

And the requisite direct aft pic.  With the top cowl mounted this shot shows the actual clearance between top cowl and prop spinner flow guide: again, 3/8″.

Hindsight is always 20/20, and knowing the results now I would have approached the final prop spinner fitting a bit differently, focusing all the trimming on the right side of the blade in the first pic below.  Let me explain: with the screws installed, I would have then shifted the entire prop spinner counterclockwise to close up the slightly wider gap on the right side of the blade.  No, it won’t break the bank, but it is slightly wider than I desired. Pic 2 is a shot of the other side.

That being said, for some reason the 4 pre-installed mounting screw positions are all #6 screws, while included in the kit were #8 screws and platenuts.  Since I’ll be swapping out the #6 screws for #8 prop spinner mounting screws I plan to bias the holes CCW by about 0.02-0.03″ to balance out the clearance gaps around both prop blades.

Now, THAT all being said, here we have a wider angle shot of today’s activities: newly reset oil check door (hopefully comes out set as it should be on the cowling!) and installed prop spinner!

Tomorrow I’ve got a morning phone call with a good friend of mine, rolling into taking my little buddy to a county fair, and ending with an evening out with Jess…. so no more than checking the oil check door cure is in cards I imagine.  Sunday I’ll again be playing chauffeur to my little buddy for a round trip to her friends’ house (reminder: her mother had foot surgery and can’t drive).  So another somewhat impacted build day.

Nonetheless, pressing forward!