Finding Wheel Pant Centerline

[tx_jayhawk]

Are there any good ways to find centerline on the main wheel pants? I tried the laser trick, but that is deceiving as I found you can align it on the center points of the ends and it could still be off center.

Thanks,
Scott
7A Almost Done

[Ironflight]

I tape a string to the trailing edge, then stretch it to the nose - those two points are fairly easy to find "by eye". Then I "twang" it a bit to let it find a stright shot between those points. A bit more art than engineering, but it has worked for me.

Paul

[bhester]

I used a laser and it worked great! I mounted it on my old camera tripod and tilted it at the correct angle. It was a good time to replace those alum lines with plastic covered steel braided hoses from Bonaco also.

http://picasaweb.google.com/bobbyhesterKY/MainPants#

[Charles in SC]

That is neat. I plan to steal your rope light trick if you do not mind. I have one laying around somewhere.

[Brent Colvin]

I used a plumb bob from centerline to floor, then popped a chalk line. Measured off of it. Worked fine.

[Rick6a]

After some headscratching, I decided to take advantage of Newtonian law: I taped a length of line to the trailing edge of the wheel pant, then dangled the wheel pant on its end as you would a plumb bob. I noted the location on the nose where it touches the floor and marked that contact point as center.



Using a Sharpie, I drew that "centerline" on the bottom of the wheelpant and used it as a reference to cut in the tire opening.

[tinman]

Another cool (wet) technique that my Dad came up with was to immerse whatever object that you were trying to line up in a pool of water and then "tag" reference points with a grease pencil (china marker). The water will not lie to you...
We used this technique on the nose of the cowl when trying to mask out some paint lines around the nose air intakes. It works great on compound curves...my Dad always seemed to have a rabbit in his hat when it came to head-scratchers like this.

[rocketbob]

Wrap a string around the wheelpant starting at the trailing edge from one side, then around the nose, then to the trailing edge of the other side. Take the string off, and mark 1/2 of the distance off...voila there's your center on the nose.

[sglynn]

Originally Posted by tinman

Another cool (wet) technique that my Dad came up with was to immerse whatever object that you were trying to line up in a pool of water and then "tag" reference points with a grease pencil (china marker). The water will not lie to you...
We used this technique on the nose of the cowl when trying to mask out some paint lines around the nose air intakes. It works great on compound curves...my Dad always seemed to have a rabbit in his hat when it came to head-scratchers like this.

I'm trying to find centerline on my pants both on top and sides and I'm be deceived with the string method cause it will move even if taught and the nose pant has a ridge that seems like the top but it is off to one side. This water method looks like a way to get centerlines after using gravity method to find forward most point.

Any other goodvways to find the fore and aft points and then draw a centerlines

[crabandy]

Originally Posted by Rick6a

After some headscratching, I decided to take advantage of Newtonian law: I taped a length of line to the trailing edge of the wheel pant, then dangled the wheel pant on its end as you would a plumb bob. I noted the location on the nose where it touches the floor and marked that contact point as center.



Using a Sharpie, I drew that "centerline" on the bottom of the wheelpant and used it as a reference to cut in the tire opening.

No pics, but very close to Rick's method. I squared up the 2 halves and held them together with clecos. I drilled a hole slightly undersized to a nail and drove the nail in the middle of the rear tail of the pant and hung the assembly upside down like Rick did. I put a spoonful of water in the front of the wheelpant, left it for 5 minutes so it stopped wiggling and marked the center of the front based on the water droplet. Pretty easy to eyeball string lines once you have a center point front and back. Much simpler than it sounds!!