Cowling test mount

Since a majority of the stuff in the engine compartment (aka firewall forward in airplane lingo) has been installed I needed to start thinking about the cowling. This is a notoriously hard task because the fit and finish of the fiberglass cowl from the factory sucks. The cowl and the baffling work together to cool the engine. Keep in mind aircraft engines are not typically cooled with a radiator like your car - they use air to cool down the engine.

We ran into some problems installing the cowling. The fuel injection servo has brackets on either side to control the throttle and mixture. Evidently, the mixture bracket is under some stress because of the angle that it's supported. It's hard to describe but I'll grab a photo as I explore a solution. In addition, The mixture "bracket" is controlled by a cable with a threaded rod end, but I'm pretty sure that should have safety wire to secure it in place. Need to follow up on that.

So, with the mixture linkage all screwy the problem is that the cowl doesn't fit properly. For some reason, the forward air box (basically ram air intake) is slightly angled to the co-pilot's side by about 15 degrees. Even with that eccentricity, the mixture cable linkage interferes with the side of the cowling. What's even weirder is that on the pilot side (where the mixture is) there is not any clearance at all, but on the co-pilot side (where the throttle is) there is 3 inches of extra space. This is all while the cowling is secured on the perimeter so it should be pretty much centered. Kelly suggested finding out if we can cut the fiberglass and expand the scoop portion of the ram air intake so there is just more room to work with.

Thottle side - plenty of room

Mixture linkage interefence