I added a couple of #8 nutplates to the inside faces of the cowl inlets. The needed to be set forward of the aft edge about 1/2″ to clear the inlet seals. You can also see that I used some epoxy/flox to fill the hole that I’ve been using to align the cowl up to now. The plans specify three nutplates here, but the plans also don’t specify a plenum which results in substantially more force trying to separate the cowl halves. With the plenum, there’s far less force trying to lift the upper cowl, so two nutplates should be just fine.
The upper and lower halves of the cowls don’t perfectly align at the outer edges of the inlets, so I mixed up some epoxy/micro and applied a fairly thick coat. Most of this will get sanded off, but I’m pretty sure I’ll still have to add another coat.
Here’s the right inlet. I managed to scrape away more on this side before the epoxy started to set up, but there will still be lots of sanding.
