Kenny's Cowl

Kenny crashed his Edge hard Wednesday, when it tip stalled unexpectedly (he had been flying in winds, got used to slow approaches, then there was no wind...).  The wing dropped, caught and she cartwheeled down the runway... shearing off the cowl and motor, but otherwise coming out unscathed. He ordered a new one, but he needs to fly up at the Pine Belt RC Fly-in this Saturday. I offered to try to repair it... I have never worked with fiberglass before. Can you tell? I wanted the challenge and he had nothing to lose!

Post Crash - Pre Repair

I failed to get a pic of the left side which is cracked open all the way along the cowl. Its always something...

Repair

CA's the puzzle back together. Then fiberglassed the major split you can see here..

The ring was in pieces, back together again. I used a piece of plastic to support the ring on the left.

Fiberglassed the major crack. I was a little heavy with the resin.

Also had a few resin overruns.

All sanded.

You can see where I used fiberglass to round out the notch in the bottom.

Nice clean round notch.

Bondo magic!

Bondo sanded and cleaned.

Primer coat.

Painted in gloss dark blue. Here warming it in front of the fireplace on a Lazy Susan I could spin to evenly warm all sides. It came out quite nice. Not perfect but pretty darn good.  Learned a lot, will do a few things differently next time. Really like the Bondo!

Here it is on Kenny's plane. Maybe we should have gone with the red?