Boot cowl brace, left control grip

Added two braces to the boot cowl that I should have done when constructing it originally. Probably not needed, but it does allow the instrument panel to stand on its own now when I remove the boot cowling to do the avionics wiring.

I also added the left stick grip. It should have slid straight into place, except the bushing was too large. I put a bolt through it and put it into the drill chuck, and turned it down with a file. Took a while but I didn’t have a lathe so it worked ok. I’ll do the other side tomorrow. Clearance from the instrument panel is minimal but there’s no need to have fingers etc on top of the control grip and it should only need to clear the dash panel for full forward elevator. Most of the time it will be behind the dash.

This morning I rang Clint at Vetterman exhausts. He has kindly offered to cover shipping and tighten the exhaust pipes to clear the cowling. It was an interesting conversation. Clint said most of the pipes fit well until about 2-3 years ago, and now he gets a few that don’t fit well. That would probably coincide with the change to the Bearhawk Bravo model which made me wonder if there was some small firewall forward change at that time that went largely unnoticed.