Cowling (pg 5)

Here the side hinges are installed. Fit was pretty good at this point, except for the match of top to bottom cowl at the air inlets. That front area requires some fiberglass work to get as nice a finish as I've seen on flying RVs:

All cowling hinges drilled and cleco'd. View from left side:

These next two shots show where I slipped with the rivet squeezer while riveting the side hinges to the cowl. The eyelet I crushed eventually had to be cut off. I tried bending it open but couldn't get a lineup that let the hinge pin slide in easily enough so just ground the eyelet off. Looks and works fine. I don't expect any problems once it's flying, but will keep an eye on it and it's easy enough to fix later if problems develop.

See description for picture above for explanation of how I ended up with this flattened hinge eye that I had to cut off:

I used the standard Van's method of securing the horizontal hinge pins on the cowl using a tab welded on the end of the hinge pin wire and installing/removing from the front. If I was doing it over, I'd go with something like this picture I took of a friend's RV-6 cowl hinge pin:

I didn't like the "elephant ear" camlocs that the RV-6/6A plans call for on the oil access door as fasteners, so used these flush mount Hartwell latches instead (one on each corner of the door). Aircraft Spruce wanted $90+ for these brand new but I bought a set of four off of E-Bay for a fraction of that. These are 0.051 offset Hartwell latches and fit the oil door / cowl with minimal sanding:

Hartwell latches for oil dipstick access door:

Cowling: pg 1 | pg 2 | pg 3 | pg 4 | pg 5

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This page was last updated on 12/18/11.

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