Long ago I followed the manual's procedure for installing the instrument
panel, placing 8 mounting bolts around the top flange. The nutplates for the
outboard most bolts on each side wanted to be very close to the radius on the
inside edge of the panel's flange which caused the nutplates to angle
outward. To counter this, small wedges of aluminum were fitted under these
nutplates to allow these bolts to thread in nicely.
Sometime later, the cowl was installed. The cowl bolts are pre-ordained to go
in a particular positions based on number of bolts and fixed spacing.
Recently, on completion of wiring and radio installation, the fit of the
panel was re-checked. There was some fettling required to allow the panel's
flange past the cowl's nutplates. However, by poor planning on my part, the
outboard nutplates on the panel conflicted with the newly added nutplates for
the cowl. This required fettling of the flange area outboard of the panel
nutplates along with the underlying aluminum wedge, leaving little flange
outboard of the nutplate. Had the panel nutplates position differed by one
cm, this would have been unnecessary.
Since the positions of the cowl nutplates are pre-set, the positions for the
cowl nutplates can be marked before locating the panel mounting bolts and
nutplates. The locations for the panel mounting bolts are more or less
arbitrary, allowing their placement to avoid conflict with the cowl mounting
bolts. But only if you plan ahead...
John A044
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