The International Cessna 170 Association

For what it's worth I had a cowl door pop open in flight and the results looked much like what KS170A has pictured. There's nothing you can do in the air except slow the plane down and put it in a slight skid, just enough to keep the flapping mess flopped over to one side while you limp it to a landing.

I ended up rolling out my own new doors and I believe I used .030 sheet. The original doors were about 020, but they had a doubler around the edge that had been spot welded on and helped hold the curve. I also decided on going with the DipDavis mod, and it's been working fine for the last 200 or so hours. My one complaint is that the DipDavis latches don't apply a constant tension on the doors as the springs in the OEM latches did.
Chris

So I mentioned a small rivet might work to form a dimple on the cowl catch to hold the top latch from slipping off. Wonder where I saw that

Thats right my own airplane.

See the little dimple in the hole drilled in the latch to keep it on the inner catch. See the little dimple See how the dimple was made with a small rivet and some fancy file work.

I also had a left cowl pop open a few minutes after departure in my A model, I immediatly slowed to decrease the flapping and had enough altitude to try a slip into the open side while it was comming down. I got very lucky and the door wedged between the front clyinder and the lower cowl, I continued a gentle slip back to the runway and it finally let loose again just after touchdown. The right side was not damaged and the left side had so little I was able to latch it closed again but I also wraped the whole nose with duck tape to get home. The left cowl was replaced as well as all latches since it was caused by a failure of the spring clip in the lower portion of the original left front latch which then let the rear come off. I now have the dzuz style safety on the bottom but think I will look at something for the top also, not something I wish to experience again.
Kim

See this thread for pictures of the extra features on the L-19 Bird Dog that better secure the cowl with the same underlying latches as used on the C-170's: http://www.cessna170.org/forums/viewtop ... 75#p133575
One of the extra features on the Bird Dog cowl latch is a dimple on the upper part of the latch like Bruce shows above.