Sam James Cowl LUVIN'

[bullojm1]

So far the James cowl has been a lot of extra work. Last night I needed to trim my baffles and wasn't looking forward to that task. I have seen all kinds of methods -- the most famous one being the paper-clip method where you look at how far down the cowl pressed the paperclip attached to the baffles to get an idea of what kind of space there was to work with.

It occurred to me that for the first few passes, if I could find a spacer to put around a thick black sharpie, I could reach my hand under the cowl through the inlet holes and mark on the baffles the contour of the top of the cowl. So I found a 3/8" nut threaded nicely to the thick black sharpie:



I reached my hand under the top cowl and traced along the top of the cowl onto the baffles:





After I traced, I snipped the baffles and repeated. However, each time I went to stick my hand under the top cowl, it was closer to the engine and there was less room to work with. However, my skinny arms were able to squeeze into the space until the very end. Here is about 75% of the baffles trimmed:




All of this took about an hour or two. Dare I say it was *fun*? I don't know if you can use this method with the Van's cowl since the inlets are smaller. This is finally one of the tasks with the James cowl that saved me time over the Vans cowl!

[dons]

I'm missing something here, I thought the inlets on the SJ cowl were smaller than on the Van's cowl, so it would be easier to get your arm in there on a Van's version.

Good thing I'm still working on my wings so I have lots of time to get my mind around the SJ vs Van's cowl choice, but this kind of thing really helps, thanks.

[bullojm1]

Don-

They might be smaller when the rings are installed -- I didn't put the rings in when I had my hand stuffed in the hole for obvious reasons. Also, I think my ROUND arm fits better in the ROUND inlets on the James cowl, rather than the rectangular holes on the Van's cowl.

[dons]

Thanks Mike, I didn't know that.

[aparchment]

That Mike's arm is round?

Thanks Mike, I didn't know that.

Sorry, just stirring up trouble in an idle moment listening to a server architecture discussion.

[dons]

I was wondering if someone would read it that way, glad I'm not the only one with a bent sense of humor around here .

[Spike]

We are all bent dude.