Up until now, I’ve been using some 0.120″ aluminum hinge pins to keep the hinge halves aligned during the cowl fitting process, but these have to be replaced with stainless steel to provide the necessary strength when flying. Van’s recommends using 0.090″ stainless steel pins to make it easier to insert them because of the tight curvature, but other builders have complained that this makes for a sloppy fit and that you can make the 0.120″ stainless steel pins work if you bend them right. I cut some hinge pin stock to length and spent 30 minutes or so getting the curvature right so that it essentially follows the curvature of the firewall without any force on it. I then sharpened the end of the pin so that is won’t get hung up on the edges of any eyelets. After putting the bends in the ends of the pins as shown here, it was pretty easy to slide them in and out. I need to fabricate a little clip on the firewall to retain them and keep them from sliding out in flight, but that should be pretty straight forward.
