Manufacture of wider cowling strips

The cowling strips as supplied were an older version, only 35mm wide. The DZUS connectors would be so close to the edge of the cowling that cracking seems likely.

In more recent kits, Sling have made the cowling strip wider, to 45mm. Rather than wait for replacement parts from Sling, I decided to fabricate my own, using the original parts as a template (this was a mistake, the later Sling parts revised the shape as I discovered later). Based on another builder's kit, which had similarly upgraded strips, I fabricated my strips to be 50mm wide. The wide strips were made from 1.27mm sheet.

Because I had to revise all the incorrect hole positions on the original cowling strips at the bottom end, I also decided to refabricate the narrow cowling strips as well, from 0.8mm sheet.

A close-up of these revised bottom-end hole positions, showing the upsizing to 4.9mm and also the reduced edge-distance in this region with the narrow cowling strips. This latter feature is to accommodate fold-position tolerances in this region of the firewall.

Wide cowling strip, original and remanufactured

Remanufactured LH cowling strips, test fitted in position