Lower Engine Cowling, Part 1

With the engine apparently hung without a lot of tasks remaining, I decided to take on the cowling project as I want to eliminate or at least minimize any fiberglass work, with its accompanying dust, prior to even considering installing avionics.  So it was onward through the fog with the Baluga aka generation 1 cowling installation.

First step as shown below was to carve out a couple of notches into the bottom cowl floor to clear the nose wheel leg and the exhaust pipe.

 After that was done, I could suspend the front of the cowl with a strip of masking tape from the dummy spinner (plywood disc) and support the floor of the cowl with my hardware storage boxes.  This gave me a crude representation of what the lower cowl was supposed to look like attached to the firewall.

After the cut outs were made it was much easier to rig the cowling more precisely with clamps.

 The sides of the lower cowl are held in place to the fuselage via hinges.  At the very bottom of the cowl, where the floor had previously been are two nutplate fittings

Nutplates installed and lower cowling drilled to fit in place.  Also note that the lower cowl hinge is being jigged into place with the hinge pin.

Next, the cowl is drilled and cleco'd from the inside where more precise placement of holes in the hinge stock can be made.

Finished pilot side of lower cowl cleco'd in place.

Next, is the passenger side....

Finally, a shot of the lower cowl's nose bowl and its proximity to the spinner template.