Fixed Spinner Gap

One thing that has been bugging me about the fit between the upper and lower cowl halves is the fit between the cowl and the spinner.  If you go back and look at this entry, you can see what I’m talking about.  Because any further work will lock in the fit between the upper and lower halves, I needed to take care of this now.  I cleaned up a few boogers inside the flange of the upper cowl and then ground away a fair amount of the face of the lower flange to allow the upper cowl to slide backward over 1/16″.  Now the gap is really nice all the way around the spinner.  I’ll probably still add a little filler to make the gap perfect, but I want to have the two cowl halves completely trimmed and joined along the sides.  Here’s the fit on the right side.

And here’s the fit on the left side.  The gap is slightly wider right at the joint, but some filler will take care of that.

The joint at the front left corner fits quite well.  The upper and lower halves are very close to coplanar.  I’m going to glass in a flange on the lower half anyway, and some filler will make this perfect.

The fit on the right front corner leaves a bit to be desired though.  Part of the problem is the overlap between upper and lower halves that is pulling the upper cowl out a bit.  I’ll probably have to grind away a fair amount of these parts and reglass them to get this joint to look nice.