The oil cooler plenum had some low spots, so I laid a few thick coats of some filler primer to fill these in. I’ll sand most of this back off in a couple of days to level the surface.
I also wrapped the edges of the oil door in packing tape and applied some micro around the edges to level the cowl with the door.
With all of the cowling hinges riveted, I started the final fitting of the cowl. I installed all of the hinge pins and then started iteratively sanding the cowl edges to create a uniform gap between the edges to allow room for paint and to prevent the edges from rubbing against each other. I got the side gaps nice and even, but still need to work on the cowl to firewall fit a bit.
I riveted the remaining three hinges on the lower cowl. These were the other side hinge (at the bottom of the picture) and the two stainless steel hinges along the lower edge (at the left of the picture).
I found a great lock online that can be flush mounted against the side of the plane. Most camlocks mount through the hole, but this can be mounted from behind so that it doesn’t protrude beyond the skin. This is apparently the baggage compartment lock for a Lambretta/Scooters India Limited motor-scooter. You can find them on eBay for about $5.
The problem is that the lock is designed so that the key will only come out in the locked position as seen here. I didn’t realize this when I ordered the lock, but it obviously won’t work since I want to be able to unlock the plane and remove the key.
I disassembled the lock and modified it so that the key will also come out in this position. This was easier than I thought and probably took no more than 15 minutes.
Afterward, I got started on the cowl again by riveting one of the side hinges on with epoxy/flox. This was substantially easier than the other hinges because the eyelets protrude beyond the edge of the cowling. This made it far easier to clean up the excess epoxy since it didn’t squeeze into the area between the eyelets.
