The manual outlines a method to alter the curvarure of the oil door, if necessary, to match the cowling profile.

Maybe I was lucky, but mine matched perfectly with no change required. Thanks Vans!

The hinge was where I did make changes.

We wanted an oil door with a spring on the hinge, so that after landing we can open it to help cool inside the cowling.

So rather than use the kit hinge, I purchased a hidden sprung hinge from Aircraft Spruce. It was originally designed by Avery I think?

After playing around with the geometry, I found the only way to fit this was to change the postion of the hinge on the oil door itself.

The four holes closest to the edge in the picture are the kit holes, and so you can see the change required.

But I reckoned it was worth it, and after drilling a couple of location holes in the cowling itself and testing, I could see it was going to be just fine.

I also decided to fit Skybolt RV-OD2 Flush Fasteners.

These are very unobtrusive and are adjustable so you can ensure a nice locking action.

The Vans manual suggests opening up the fastener holes in the cowl to 1/2″ diameter … but I found I could get away with 3/8″ for these Skybolt fasteners.

The receptacles arrive with pin, seen here in the 10 o’clock postion. These just enable adjustment and are removed once satisfied with the set up.

As you can see, the pin makes riveting hard on that side …

… so I temporarily removed the pin to set the rivets.

They are easily re-inserted after prising the clip away with a pointed object.

The receptacles are adjusted by screwing the camloc barrel inside in/out until the locking action is just right.

Then the pin is removed, locking the barrel.

The door spring is located on the hinge pin.

The door instructions say that the compression of the spring when the door is closed will lock the hinge pin in postion.

To be fair, it does.

But the pin can still move, and until I’m sure some wacky resonant effect will not move the pin, I decided to make a little removable blocking barrier to make sure the pin cannot come adrift in flight.

It’s nice to be able to remove the pin so that a spring can be replaced (it arrives with two), and also so that I’ll be able to remove the door for painting etc.

I closed the gap around the oil door to make it uniform.

I attached tape around the door edge to allow for paint thickness. Then I covered the edges with packing tape to act as a release agent, & filled the gap with Microballoons.

Also the original four holes in the door needed filling!

After popping out the door once cured, the result was good.

So here we are, after landing … the door nicely held open to help cooling.