Project Complete!

After many hours, I finally finished the cowling repairs I've been working on! In my last post, I shared some photos of the corrosion that I was cleaning and removing on the engine cowling of a Cessna 206 owned by Missionary Air Group. Wherever I removed corroded material, I had to make repairs. Well, here's the finished product!

I know it may not look like much, but this was a challenging repair, especially for someone who is new to this type of work. It involved fabricating 12 new repair pieces (some of them are hidden beneath doublers) to match the shape of the existing channels or fit over them as reinforcements. The curvature of the pieces also had to match the curves of the cowling quite closely, so that the cowling would fit correctly when installed into position, and so the nose bowl would fit properly to the front of the cowling. The repair pieces also had to be riveted into the existing structure in a manner that would give the cowling sufficient rigidity.

As I mentioned in the last post, a replacement engine cowling would cost over $5000 (or $10,000 for the right and left) if purchased from Cessna! Because of this, it was worth investing many hours of my time. It was rewarding for me to finish this project, and to make a small contribution to getting this airplane back into missionary service in a condition that will allow it to fly for many years to come!

A few of the repair pieces prior to installation.