Installed horizontal sky bolts down both sides. In my case, a spacing of 3" worked well and will hopefully make the whole thing a bit more robust, but in combination with the reduced spacing along the firewall it means that I'm coming up one fastener short. I'll need to order another one from skybolt to finish this up for a total of 37.

Due to backdrilling/locating from the outside first, there wasn't any drama with hole location. I did notice that the side gap shifted slightly as I cinched everything up. The port side got a bit tighter and the starboard side opened up a bit. Aft toward the firewall, we're talking maybe a 64th" so I suspect just loosening and shifting the cowl might be enough to take care of it, but both sides symmetrically open up as they move fwd.

When I had this trial fit, I had a nice symmetrical gap of about 1/32" all around, other than it was maybe closer to a 16th as it wrapped around the cowl cheeks on both sides. Now it appears to be about 1/16" on the fwd sides transitioning to almost 1/8" on the cheeks.

I've got to remove/install this several more times as I work on the piano hinges on the vertical firewall seam and the screws that go across the bottom. If these gaps remain consistent I will have to close this up a bit with fiberglass. I'll save that for when I'm in fiberglass mode working on canopy skirts.

Downloading pictures for this entry also shows in glaring detail how I managed to get off a rivet head and cut it with a squeezer on the port side when I was riveting the flanges on. I'll have to drill that out and replace as well.

One more work session to wrap up details, then I'll call this done for now and come back to it after I get another fastener.