I started the oil door, by trimming it and attaching the hidden hinge:
Oil door trimmed and sitting in place
Oil door with hidden hinge clecoed to it
I then made holes for the KM-610 latches, carefully setting their position forward and aft near the edges of the top cowl oil door edge:
Oil door with the latches clecoed in place
Oil door latch being actuated
Oil door clecoed in place with the latches
Oil door clecoed in place, open with the latches
When closing the door, the latches are strong enough that they'd end up eating up the fiberglass at the edge of the opening, so I used 0.020" stainless steel to protect it (folded it up around a 0.064" piece of aluminum, forming an edge grommet of kinds):
Stainless steel edge grommets
Oil door edge grommets in place
I trimmed the foam core to cover the open parts of the oil door:
Oil door with foam core sitting in place
It was then time to trim the sides of the cowl halves to make the split line:
Aft end of the bottom/top cowl split line
Forward end of the bottom/top cowl split line
With the split line sanded down to where the halves meet nicely, I installed side Skybolts.
I marked the firewall Skybolt position on the top cowl (which was about 7/8" from the edge of the skin), left 3" to the first side Skybolt hole, then 3.5" for every subsequent Skybolt flange (vertical lines in the picture below). I then marked the Skybolt flanges with lines at 5/16" and 5/8" from their bottom edge, aligned the top line to the edge of the bottom cowl while centering the larger hole with the vertical lines, and marked the tips of the bottom line along the bottom cowl. I roughly connected all of those into a single line (they never line up exactly, but they were close enough), and then marked 1" intervals along that line as the hole locations, starting from where I estimated the first flange hole to be. I realized that wth 1" spacing, if you start at about 1/8" from the side edge of the first flange, you'll get a repeating pattern every 2 flanges, and all holes end up in good locations (not too close to the edges and not on the flange's flange (the bend). I then drilled a couple of those holes, and adjusted the rivet spacer to drill all the others 3/32", then clamped the flanges (at that point you can see the bottom flange line through the holes for alignment) and match-drilled into them:
Rivet spacer in place to drill the Skybolt flange attachment holes
Bottom cowl with Skybolt flanges clecoed to it
The flanges kept pushing the top cowl outboard, to the point that even with the Skybolts, the surface of the top cowl would end up a bit proud of the bottom cowl - so we added a slight bend to the flanges to follow the contour of the top cowl (being careful not to bend the prt where the Skybolt receptacle is attached), and with that we managed to open up all the Skybolt holes:
Skybolt flange with a slight bend
Top cowl with drilled Skybolt holes
I also started working on the nose gear fairing, but that'll be continued later:
Aft nose gear fairing clamped in place
Next we need to lay up fiber on the oil door, prime and rivet the Skybolt flanges, and get the rest of the nose gear fairing in place.
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