Time to really clean up around the cowl. Time to install the camloc lightweight adjustable fasteners. Time to clean up and match the cowl intersections, the spar, strake and wing intersections. In short time for a lot of things that need doing before I can paint. Things I had been putting off.

This took a good month which is horrifying in terms of time. The cowls just didn’t quite fit right. I though I had it nailed ages ago. ….WRONG.

Gratuitous cowl shot because I like my own photography. It is an interesting shape. Probably needs an engine.

Cowls on and clicoed in place. Not quite a perfect fit after all.

Looks OK here but it was not pretty at the lower sides and underneath.

I thought all I had to do was use the clico holes and that was my match drilling done. So I went ahead and did the fasteners.

This perfect looking seam took a lot of fill and fair with the cowls on and off numerous times.

OK, I’ll get to making this perfect later. The rear of the cowl fastener area will be filled and filled later as well. No point in painting these now as I have at least an oil door to put in. Maybe a door to check the coolant levels too. So this will be painted after the fuselage.

This is just a taste of the fill and fair I did multiple times, top and bottom.

Another photo that I just liked the shape of.

The holes and the fasteners were a touch out after my match drilling plan failed. I should have done it insitu. I ended up filling about half of all the camloc holes with flox and one ply of glass. I then redrilled them and dremeled and hand filled to get a pretty good match-up.  Now the fasteners fit in more easily.

This is the bottom intersection that took a LOT of work to get right. Did I mention the globs of filler I used on all the cowl lips? No? OK, I’m not proud of that. There was some possibility of oil canning. I needed a better flush fit. The top cowl just wasn’t sitting right.

A couple of weeks probably went into filling and fiddling to make them sit more easily. It sometimes takes a while to understand why something doesn’t work so I keep at it until it makes sense.

Its not perfect down here but it is a LOT better than it was. Working upside down is not my favorite thing. Who knew?

More work getting these parts fitting like they should. I have more pics but its depressing. This is now pretty close to painting time.

I still have a few more hours to tweak things but its almost good enough (the enemy of perfection).