Jan 24 2004 - As mentioned earlier, I am shimming the fiberglass out to the level of the fuselage using strips of glass cloth epoxied to the inside. Here is a picture of one of the areas where a fastener will be located. The shim strips are 1.5" wide, used three layers of cloth around the top (two on the sides), and were covered with peel-ply and left to harden. These worked great! I was able to grind down the shims until I achieved a perfect fit.

I ran the side hinges to within 1/8" of the aft edge of the fiberglass. I drilled the first six holes at the front on each side with everything propped up and strapped in position. I then took everything off and drilled the remaining holes on the work bench.

I used my steel rule to set the gap and it ends up with .016" - .020" clearance. Unfortunately the camera focused on the clecos, not the surface.

This area on both sides ended up with an excessive gap on the aft side. I was too aggressive sanding the aft edge before everything was in final position. I'll do a little work here and see if I can improve this.

Next up is to epoxy and rivet the hinges in.

The hinges have been epoxied in place and this morning after letting them harden overnight I set the rivets.

All the Skybolt fasteners have been drilled and fit minus the bottom four since I ran out of rivets. Next up are the hinge pins. I am going to run the pins into the cockpit inside a brass tube. This idea came from Danny King and should make getting the top cowl off super easy and no worries about pins getting into the prop.

I found eight more rivets and finished off the fasteners. The top/bottom gap is perfect, the firewall gap is a little more than I'd like. I'll decide later if it is worth fussing over.

May 15 2004 - I started fitting the oil door to the top cowl. I needed to square up the edges of the opening and used a Dremel tool. The edge guide is taped in place 1" away from the desired edge. You can see the top and bottom edges are already finished.

Here is the base and bit I used in the process.

Just take light passes until the base hits the guide all the way down the cut. It leaves an excellent step that the door fits into nicely.

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