After helping out at the EAA9 pancake breakfast this morning...

...I got back to work on the firewall panel mods. I decided to cut out this area below the brake line bracket in the hopes that it'll allow me to install and remove this panel without undoing the brake lines.

Then I fabricated a removable cover panel to close the space back up, and also drilled the firewall panel to the sub floor.

The removable panel doesn't look too fancy from the aft side.

...but on the forward (hidden) side, you can see this neat little spring clip doodad. I did it this way because I didn't want it vibrating, but I also didn't think the firewall panel was thick enough to install nutplates in. Being only .020 thick, I'd probably bend the panel when pushing on it with a screwdriver.