I popped the two cowl halves apart again.  The epoxy/flox filler worked perfectly and there’s a nice smooth that perfectly matches the outside of the lower cowl.  The end of the flange was a little epoxy starved, so I mixed up some lightweight filler and buttered it up.  I’ll sand this flush tomorrow.

I had a bunch of excess lightweight filler left over, so I covered the last of the fiberglass strips on the left side of the upper cowl.

Since I need the filler to cure before making any more progress on the cowl, I decided to get started on the gear leg fairings. I lined up the fairing with a couple of squares to ensure there is absolutely no twist.  Any amount of twist is added drag, and can act like a rudder to yaw the plane.  After I was sure it had no twist, I taped the trailing edge together in a few spots.  This not only keeps it straight during the next couple of steps, but the tape strips will act as a indicator to ensure I don’t introduce any twist later.

I cut out the gear leg fairing template and lined it up with a line I drew on the leading edge, making sure to make the leading edge of the template 3 7/32 back from the scribe line.

I then taped up the rest of the template and marked all the way around.

Here’s the marked fairing.

After a few minutes with tin snips and a sanding block, here are the trimmed fairings.

I trimmed the right wheel pant bracket to match the left and fabricated three more spacers.

I then fit the outboard wheel pant brackets, but the attach point on the axle nut was rocking slightly which would have let the wheel pant move up and down a bit.  I used a few layers of aluminum tape to make the bracket fit much more tightly on the axle nut.

Here’s what it looks like installed.

I’ve never been very happy with how uniform the spinner to cowl gap was.  The way the cowl was formed, the center of the ring where the upper and lower half join was slightly recessed and had a larger gap than the upper and lower portion of the ring.  To fix this, I mixed up some lightweight filler and spread it around the ring.  I then covered it with saran wrap.

I put a flat board over that and pressed down firmly until enough of the filler squeezed out that I could see the pink part of the cowl around most of the ring.

In addition to the bug which landed in my paint job, there were a bunch of scratches and pinholes visible in the finish.  Since this will be very visible with the cowl off, I decided to try out a new technique for surface finishing.  I sanded the surface with 80 grit and then spread raw epoxy over the surface.  After it kicked, I squeegeed as much off as I could and then spread on another coat.  After that kicked, I squeegeed it off as well.  That should fill all of the pinholes and scratches.  I’ll sand this with some finer grit sandpaper before reshooting the primer and finish coat.

Between coats of raw epoxy on the plenum, I got started fitting the wheel pants.

After figuring out where the two halves fit the best, I added some witness marks to make sure I put it back together the same way each time.

I trimmed the forward end to the scribe line and then sanded the edge until it sat flat on the table.  You have to spread the wheel pant slightly when checking because it naturally springs inward a bit.  It you sanded it flat in it’s rest state, the line wouldn’t be straight when installed on the aft half of the pant.