And finally .....
Yesterday i got the cowl to a point where i am happy; i have lost count of how many times these things have been on and off; So to celebrate i ordered a full set of Milspec cowling fasteners. not cheap at $669 but will make the cowls easy to remove and refit.
I did have an issue with the lower cowl probably my fault even though i always triple measure before sanding steadily; any way i ended up with the lower cowl not lining up with the bottom edge of the firewall.
I had to build up the right hand side of lower cowl side which took me about a week or so then yesterday made some final sanding adjustments if you have done cowl fitting you will probably know what i am talking about.
The cowls themselves are really good but have thousands of pin holes especially where the honeycomb sections are. If you research on the net there are loads of different approaches to fill these some of which appear to be very time consuming so here is what i did with mine....
1) Used 60 grit to sand over the cowls
2) Mixed some epoxy and lightly brushed the epoxy over 1/4 of the cowl at a time
3) Mixed up some micro balloons and using a credit card piece of plastic ( the wife's credit card !! ) scraped over the cowl until a nice even coat just enough to fill the holes.
4) Next day sanded down the cowls followed by some wet sanding
5) Shot some acid etch primer and when dried i wet scotched (grey ) to a smooth finish
Apart from the odd pinhole that i misssed which will get filled with stopper, that's pretty much ready for final primer and paint.
So until my Milspec order arrives I turned my attention back to the canopy. I decided to drop the instrument panel back in to make sure there were no interference issues nope ! every thing is good ...and with the weather getting warmer i am planning to cut the bubble in the next week or so!