judoka5051
Member
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2018
- Messages
- 11
- Reaction score
- 8
Good day All,
A little history first will make sense of the rest of this post. I'm primarily a 'homebuilt' flyer. I've built several planes ranging from a 2 holer biplane to a couple of RV's. Now, I'm a relatively new Cherokee owner, and I find (somewhat to my surprise) that I really like the plane. I never enjoyed flying the Cessna's. I'm mid build on my current RV project and needed a plane to travel in, thus the Cherokee 180. The plane performs well, but could be faster and a LOT lighter. I recently pulled the cowl to replace the heat shield and was stunned at how heavy it is. I don't remember the exact weight, but I compared it to the RV cowl and found that it is 40 lbs heavier. There's no reason for that! The RV canopy is plenty sturdy, and routinely sees 200 mph. What's to stop me from pulling a plug off the stock cowl and making a new cowl using the same process as the RV?
Any legal reason not to do it? I can tell you that there's not only a lot of weight, but a lot of lost speed there, but that's a whole other issue.
A little history first will make sense of the rest of this post. I'm primarily a 'homebuilt' flyer. I've built several planes ranging from a 2 holer biplane to a couple of RV's. Now, I'm a relatively new Cherokee owner, and I find (somewhat to my surprise) that I really like the plane. I never enjoyed flying the Cessna's. I'm mid build on my current RV project and needed a plane to travel in, thus the Cherokee 180. The plane performs well, but could be faster and a LOT lighter. I recently pulled the cowl to replace the heat shield and was stunned at how heavy it is. I don't remember the exact weight, but I compared it to the RV cowl and found that it is 40 lbs heavier. There's no reason for that! The RV canopy is plenty sturdy, and routinely sees 200 mph. What's to stop me from pulling a plug off the stock cowl and making a new cowl using the same process as the RV?
Any legal reason not to do it? I can tell you that there's not only a lot of weight, but a lot of lost speed there, but that's a whole other issue.
