Riveted Together and Oil Door 11-26-04

The cowling has been permanently riveted together.  Ron has edge-finished each of the cowling segments with a chamfer, and then flush riveted the segments together.

He's also added doubler plates on the inside of the upper cowling seam, joggled the reinforcement ring to fit over the segment overlaps, and added cowling alignment pins and latches to help the two cowling sections come together.  It doesn't look like much changed, but now the cowling is permanently put together and there's a lot of little detail work that's been done.

Here's the cowling on the airplane - note no clecos.  The cowling upper mount and piano hinge is also now rigidly attached.

The perfectly round opening and bump shape is amazing.  Notice the cowling latches at the bottom.

You can see the nose opening reinforcement bulb in this shot.  You can also see the chamfering done on the edges of the cowling panel sections, and the flush rivets.

Since the left hand cowling section is now impossible to open on its own due to a closer fit around the exhaust pipe, and for convenience purposes, Ron has added an oil door on the left hand side.  The door hinges up and has an internal hinge like a Cessna oil door, so no hinge shows on the outside.

Here's the cowling dismounted.

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