oil access door

[Jerrytex]

About ready to paint my cowling and realized that I should probably put an oil access door in the upper cowling to check the oil. Looking for ideas, advice, pics, etc. on the best way to do this.

[Danny]

Kiftox sells an oil access door kit with instructions on how to proceed. I'm in the process of installing now. Straightforward & easy.
Danny
Super Sport
99% complete-almost

[Jerrytex]

I am about to cut an access door in the cowling to be able to check the oil but know I am having second thoughts. I am wonderring if most people have an oil access door? I have to cut in at least a 6 inch square door to get my hand around the oil tank and unscrew the cap to access the dipstick. This seems like a big opening and half of the door is behind the firewall. Just curious if this is something that most kitfoxes have? The alternative is to unscrew the cowling every flight but that might be a good thing to be able to check everything else out? Thoughts?

[Dorsal]

Such an access door is standard on the current designs, personally it would be a real pain not having it.

[HighWing]

I had a little different take on this when I built my first Model IV. I hadn't flown for about twenty years and had done the long overdue BFR in a Citabria which meant a check out in that airplane. The preflight checklist had something like the following - check the oil level and look for any loose or chafed wires. This while looking through the little 4X4 access door.
I felt that I had built this puppy and had an understanding about what all those possibly chafed wires were all about but a limited understandng on what all could go wrong. For 900 hours, I lifted off the top cowl to check the oil at every preflight. Among the things I found were the broken ignition module mounts - twice. I have already painted the new Model IVs cowl with no oil access door. Do I recommend this? Not necessarily. This is just to suggest that there might be something more to check under the hood than the oil.

Lowell

[akflyer]

I am with Lowell on this one. I like to look under the hood each and every time before I fly to check water level, loose wires, hoses, oil leaks etc. Takes an extra 30 seconds to pop the cowl off and get a good look under the hood. I do this summer and winter rain or shine.