Ron wrote:

Today on my flight to Sebastian/FL I noticed on landing that the wire that suppose to go through the piano hinges (cowling) was sticking out on the side (not a pretty sight)

So I pulled it out and pushed it in again, it looked good to me, and the cowling seemed ok, but when I can back home it as sticking out.....again :(

So is there any trick I can use ? (it did not do any damage and the wire was just hanging out at the side.

Ron, This is most often caused by the cowling halves and/or fuselage join not being correctly mated before inserting the hinge wire. (You didn't say where specifically you were having trouble; some used this only for joining the top and bottom; some used it in other areas.) It's important that you trouble shoot this and correct ASAP, as the cowling could easily fail and cause loss of the aircraft.

I can't offer much advice if the problem is with the cowl/fuselage joint as these are all different, but the top/bottom cowl joint is easier to troubleshoot, especially if the hinge wire enters from the front of the engine (the most common configuration).

If this is the situation you have, try re-mating the cowling halves with the pin removed. Then carefully insert the pin an inch or so into the joint, and look inside the air inlet hole to see where it's going. You may have to (carefully) push aside some of the baffling to do this. The trick is to make sure the hinge halves are correctly mated before starting in with the wire. Once you get the wire through the first top and bottom pivots, it's impossible to insert it any more into the hinge joint until they are correctly mated--and aligned--unless one of the hinge parts itself is broken.

So conduct a good inspection of the area to figure out whether it's a broken hinge part or a mating issue and work from there.

Glad to talk to you off-line if you want to give a call.

Good luck; this should be trivial to correct once you figure out what's causing the alignment problem.

Bob Pastusek
703-271-8008