Cowling progress

Had a beautiful day to work today. Started with a little painting on the cowl retaining pins and reinforcement patches. I only painted these because it happens to be "yellow" days here in Virginia. Everything is yellow from the pollen from these.

The rain last night cleared the air enough for some early morning painting. It will be another two weeks before I can do any finish painting. Here are the cowl pins , they were a little rusty so they got bead blasted and primed.

The eyebrow reinforcements got primed too.

I then preped the cowling for final riveting. I wanted to install the doublers with some epoxy, so I scrubbed the cowl and the repair pieces with phosphoric acid etch and scotch brite pad. I figured that would rough the surface and clean at the same time. All I had for epoxy was some T88 so that is what I used. I put on a really thin coat, so that I did not get much squeeze out and ruin my clecos and tools. I managed to squeeze all the rivets except for one.

  It came out pretty good, only time will tell how it will hold up in service. Except for a few details and painting the cowl is finished.

That was all I got done today, my helper was busy studying for the new air traffic controller exam.