After minutes of careful but consistent turning, pulling and cursing, it finally started sliding just a bit.
When it came out I could see what had held it in place.
Van's had applied the fuel-resistant lubricant quite deliberately and that stuff is sticky like something!
Inside the gascolator there is really nothing that could otherwise hold the bowl in place as this view shows.
Finally, I had the room to get to the rivet that had to get drilled out.
Well, right behind that hose that is. Drilling this rivet out was anything but easy, though! As soon as the spinning drill bit hit the head of the rivet the sucker started spinning like crazy and the drill did not dig into it. Any attempts to clamp something to the shop head side of the rivet were futile because the fuel line and the rudder horns and cables prevented me from getting any tool attached to it. A helping hand was also not in sight and I could not grow my arms to the required length to hold the drill bit onto the rivet head and hold the shop head side with a pair of pliers at the same time.
I resorted to the Dremel tool to grind the manufactured head right off. That was fairly easy and safe todo as the only soft aluminum was the head itself and that was also the material I intended to remove. The hard steel around it would not easily get scratched by the grinder.
It did work out I was able to remove this nasty rivet.
You can clearly see the marks from the spinning head! You can also see that screwing out the head near the rivet head was not required to remove the rivet. However, I learned later that it is required to get a cleco in that position which otherwise would not get seated. So still no short-cuts for the instructions! Just do what Van's asks you to do...
Now I was able to get the stiffener angle clecoed in place.
See how this bolt had to get unscrewed to allow the cleco to pass?
The counterpart of the clecoed hole was drilled on the upper end of the stiffener.
The alignment of the stiffener looked good too.
The center holes were up next for drilling.
An almost clean ride followed until I was almost done and noticed that my oil canister was sitting too low to allow the drill to stay perpendicular to the surface of the firewall. I loosened the nuts a bit to allow to slide it up somewhat.
Then it was smooth sailing towards the finish line.
Now everything had to come off and get deburred. The angle was easy but the backside of the firewall was a different and unpleasant story. The rudder pedals are in the way and that is on top of the gross inaccessibility of that foot room area anyway. I cut my fingertips quite a few times sensing for those burrs while I wasn't able to even look at the holes at the same time. Eventually I was satisfied with the deburring and the riveting followed. That was uneventful after I had cleared out any obstacles during the drilling phase. However, some of the holes where only accessible with the manual rivet puller - to make this task a bit more exciting, I guess.
Here is the end result of the front stiffener installation:
I also reinstalled the bowl and the clamp, which is the last step in the instructions, so I jumped ahead in that sense. I did not see why the bowl should not get put back in place at this point as I can still get to all the rivet heads for the final ProSeal sealing.
One thing stood out though:
Obviously, the coolant overflow hose will touch the sharp angle and I will put a protection around it in that place to prevent a cut above the cowl surface.
Something you could not see in the pictures is that the firewall was indeed bulging inside over its full surface. When I held the angle to it when drilling the first hole you could clearly see that. Now the angle has pulled the firewall out and straightened it up.
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