Continuing with the lower cowl!
I had the side hinges pilot-drilled and cleco'd on, so next was the bottom hinge. I started by just taping the the bottom edge of the cowl in place along the bottom of the fuselage.
There wasn't any room to drill the hinge to the cowl from the inside, and there wasn't even really an opening to mark the cowl through the holes. I eventually figured out I could make a mark through at least most of the holes by taping a sharpie to a long drill bit.
That was good enough to get most of the holes drilled, so I cleco'd what I could, did a couple of test fits, and eventually got the whole hinge attached. The bottom edge fit the fuselage pretty much perfectly; I only had to do some very minor filing at the corners and it was good to go.
Now, with the whole lower cowl attached, I took another look at the sides and noticed the cowl sat inboard of the fuselage side skin slightly.
The thickness of a scrap piece of hinge with all the lugs cut off was pretty much the perfect thickness to create a spacer and make the cowl flush with the fuselage.
I made a quick spacer for both sides and that made a big improvement!
By the way, I found a little handle made of a 3/8" piece of rod with a 1/8" hole in it was very handy for getting the hinge pins in and out!
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