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Cowl anti-chafe tape?
OK, I'll just go ahead and admit I'm getting waaaay too obsessed with my 750 build, but my painter is doing a terrific job (catalyzed urethane over epoxy primer) and I don't want to mar the paint any more than necessary ... even where it doesn't show! LOL!
My cowl is the one that came with the Jabiru USA FWF kit. The exterior has a beautiful white gelcoat finish, but the inside is the typical fiberglass layup - not particularly smooth. It appears that if I lined the 2-3 inches of the interior cowl that overlap the fuselage, it would minimize abrading the paint on the fuselage.
Seems to me if I lined that area with even something as simple as Gorilla tape,it would be helpful. Spruce has a high-dollar Teflon anti-chafe tape specifically for this application, but it's only 1" wide - of course, nothing to preclude using multiple pieces to achieve the desired width. Any other ideas?
P.S.: I did find some 5" wide 3M anti-chafe tape on Ebay last night that you can buy in 1 yd increments. A 5" width could be divided into two 21/2" pieces - probably wide enough for the overlap. IF this is the clear stuff, I suspect it's intended to be put on the fuselage and not inside the cowl?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John Austin on
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Follow up:
I got the clear polyurethane 3M tape today - 2 yards of the 5" is plenty to do a 750's cowl (you can split about 20" of the 5" wide tape to get (2) 2.5" widths for the lower cowl). I did find that it was intended to go on a smooth surface such as a painted fuselage, not on the rough fiberglass weave. Yesterday, I mounted the cowl, then went around the fuselage with painter's tape to mark where the cowl edge is. Today, I wiped that area down with alcohol and applied the tape about a 1/16" away from the painter's tape and parallel. Just like putting on vinyl decals, etc., you have to work it somewhat as you put it down to prevent air bubbles. I then slid an Xacto knife along the edge of the fuselage's sheet metal to cut off the overhanging 3M tape.
I found that a woodburning tool with a small, sharp tip works great to melt-through the tape to open up the holes for the nutplates on the lower cowl. Rather than melt through the larger holes for the Camloc sockets on the upper cowl, I chucked an Xacto blade in the woodburning tool and it cleanly cut around the edge of the hole to remove the tape.
Hopefully, this will prevent some chafing and keep the paint on the metal, protecting it from corrosion. It should also provide some small measure of protection from scratching the area with an errant Camloc!
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Permalink Reply by Jacob on
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Hi John,
Sounds like you have it sorted, if the tape wears off you can also get a teflon paint which would probably work good in the same situation as well, we use it on our aircraft at work instead of the antichaff tape to good effect but if the fibreglass is rough it may not be quite as effective as the tape although still better than nothing.
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