Here is the finished fastener riveted into the tab. Its a nicely engineered fastener. The internal locking ring of the fastener is threaded so its locking depth may be adjusted to compensate for varying fibreglass thickness. The end result is a flush fitting fastener on the cowl surface with little variation from fastener to fastener.

I will now be able to prime the cowl and get onto the next hundred items (who is counting) before final inspection day. The finished product is pretty good looking. The gap between the cowl and forward fuselage skin is a bit wider than I was shooting for but it is the same width for the length of the joint. Once paint is on the gap will shrink and ther ewill be no chance of the cowl rubbing on the fuselage skin and making the paint flake off.

        Good bye piano hinge, not all of them on the cowl but definitely the one across the top cowl section at the firewall. This thing has been a real pain from the get-go to feed the retaining wire into. I reduced the wire diameter to .090 wire from .120 as this will ease installation. Still a pain feeding wire thru a 4 inch square hole. Many RV builders choose the Skybolt Fastener system for part or all of their cowl retention system. A little on the spendy side at $200 for a complete kit with 16 fasteners, but over the long haul I am sure it will be worth it.

The kit comes with 18 aluminum tabs which have one end joggled to allow overlap with the adjacent tab. The spacing of the tabs is tweeked to make best use of the 16 fasteners (two spare tabs to screw up are provided). I spaced my tabs 3.5 inches (c-c) apart on the sides and then reduced the spacing to 3 inches (c-c) across the top of the cowl. Once riveted to the firewall flange, a number of Cleco inserts are taped in position (every third tab) and the cowl is put back in place. I installed a few trouble lights under the cowl and turned off the shop lights to allow me to see the cleco insert hole and then carefully drill the #20 hole for a cleco. I found this technique was OK but still not as accurate as I should have for a perfect fit. I removed the top cowl, and marked the exact position of the tab hole, its centre line and distance in MM from the forward fuselage skin. I replaced the cowl and then transfered these measurements to the cowl, drilled a pilot hole and then used the unibit to open the hole up to one size under the finished size of (CONFIRM). I used a twist drill to go to final size. At right the final drilling is almost complete and I am checking for accuracy.

The skybolts come with two types of fastening flanges, one fixed and one floating. It is suggested to use three floaters on the each side and the fixed across the top. Other builders have reported this doesn’t make a difference. I chose to use the floating plates where my cowl fastener hole was not perfectly aligned with the tab hole. The fasteners are then flush riveted to the firewall tabs. That proved to be difficult in a few of the tight spots around the motor mounts and above the engine ECU. The No-hole rivet squeezer yolk was able to catch those rivets that the regular yolk was too fat to reach.

Another one of those simple tasks that I had been putting off. The cowl access hatch provides a means of successfully getting the top cowl piano hinge wire in and out of position (although I have yet to actually succeed at doing it) and provides access to the dip stick and oil filler spout. I have seen a number of variations of completing this task, some folks using hidden hinges and cool remote control latches, others by the book. I figured that anything but by the book is going to take three times as long as necessary and I am working to meet a first flight time of fall 2013, so from here on no trick stuff unless it really pays off in operation or maintenance. Anyways, this little door took about 6 hours from start to finish. The cam lock fasteners are about 1/8″ too long, so new ones will be stuck on the next aircraft spruce order.

When I ordered my kit, I specified a 180 HP cowl in place of the standard 160 HP cowl. This was because I was planning on using the subaru engine for this project and it needed the additional room. I finally decided to not use the subaru engine and purchased a 180 HP IO360 with vertical induction. To make the horizontal induction cowl fit the engine, I had to order the vertical induction ram air snout. Last weekI  got to work grafting it onto the cowl. The task is pretty straight forward but takes time as one goes thru the glass, fill sand and fill and sand routine.Its getting close to being done and ready for prime, sand prime etc etc routine. I had forecast doing fiberglass work right to the end of the year (2012) and its looking like a pretty realistic plan.