Researched and ordered a bunch of stuff from Spruce and B&C. ring terminals, welding wire to make battery cables, stuff like that.

As far as actual work on the plane, I did the final trim on the lower firewall cutouts for the main gear leg sockets and installed the piano hinge sections to the vertical firewall flanges for the lower cowl half.

I spent long time determining the length and position of the hinges, because vans doesn't really give you a dimension for these. Looking at drawing 28, the rivet callout is longer in that area starting with the 6th rivet down from the longeron, so I suspected that the top of the hinge terminated there. I went down to the basement and measured the cowl & determined that it's exactly 17.5" tall, which falls right between teh 5th and 6th rivet blow the main longeron, so that was nice confirmation.

I had also asked for input on VAF and several guys warned me to not install those hinges before I was fitting the cowl. The concern is that later cowl trimming might somehow cause this to be an issue. I honestly don't see how this is a problem because you don't attach the other half of the hinge to the cowl until after its trimmed to fit.

I guess the only thing I can see possibly being an issue is that if the hinge is too high it might interfere with the horizontal hinge line at the seam between upper and lower cowl halves. However, Vans installation drawing for the cowling does have a note on one of the detail views that says to just butt these hinges together, so I don't think that it's going be an issue. There were also several guys on VAF also said that they had done it ahead of time no problem.

Based on all that, I decided to go ahead and rivet these on, so I don't have to do it later after the engine mount is installed. Time will tell whether I regret this or not, but I don't see how it will be an issue.

That ate up pretty much the whole day, but I had a little time left over, so I did the final trim on the flange cutouts for the main landing gear legs. I had marked these for trimming when I had the engine mount on and just hadn't gotten around to it.

I also knocked out a fun little project, which was to spruce up that ugly all thread that holds the fwd end of the canopy track. It's nothing special, just scrap piece of fuel line cut to length and slipped over the all thread. when I finish up the million other things I have to do, I'll cap this with a chrome acorn nut.