Nose bowl angle problem

[Sawtooth]

The cowl on my RV-9 looks tilted down. The engine mount bolts are tight, the frame is tight against the firewall. I can add epoxy and flox to reshape the gap but it seems like it should fit better than this from Van's.

 

[Roadjunkie1]

I think the fit of cowlings and other fiberglass things can be pretty variable "out of the box". I had to split my bottom cowl in two places and splice the pieces back together to get it to fit right. The upper cowl is pretty close to the spinner as is the bottom but it does not match up with the spinner like the top does. The distance is good but the cowling curve is below where the spinner sits. I've been swearing since I built her to bring that up to match the spinner better but there are more important things requiring my (precious) time!

I would consider bringing it up to a tighter fit using foam or something to fill the gap, then place fiberglass on top of that and fair it in. That is a pretty busy place as far as airflow goes. HOWEVER: you might also consider getting all the cowling pieces in place and hinged, screwed or whatever your method is and THEN look at it. I had mine lined up perfectly on the initial fittings and then The Cowling Gremlins raided the hangar one night and the fit wasn't as close as it was just (what seemed like) a few moments ago. SO: get things together and see how things line up when near completion, then work to better line things up and make changes. You will also notice later that the engine will 'settle' a little (don't like the word 'sag') after putting some time on her and things won't line up like they did. Airplanes. Huh. IMHO YMMV

 

[RV7A Flyer]

Just thinking out loud here...it looks to me like the cowling may be just a bit too low...the top is perfectly aligned *with the spinner backplate*, which means the spinner itself will perhaps sit higher than the cowling. In any case, I'd not make any decisions until I saw the sweep of the entire thing, cowling AND spinner, once the height of both the engine and the cowling are set as best as can be.

 

[Aden Rich]

Very common issue with Van's cowling. You can cross check where the engine should be by leveling your airplane and then checking the angle compared to the crankshaft flange. But if you have already set your lower cowling position and you have a larger gap at the bottom then the top of your cowl, you can only change it by adding/building up the bottom area and smoothing it into your cowling profile. I had to do that on two cowlings to date. It's a job if you want to get that gap perfect.

 

[PaulvS]

My cowl was like that too and the gap was worse on the left than the right.




I built up the inside of the top cowl ring with fibreglass and ground off about 1/8" between the spinner on the top cowl to achieve the 1/4" gap.
The gap between the lower cowl and the spinner was 3/8" and I built this up with a timber veneer and then glassed over it. It would have been less work and betted to have used glass to build it up because the timber is not as hard as fibreglass.