Help with wheel pants

floridawing · #1 10-21-2011, 08:35 PM

Hello, I have a RV6 with old style wheel pants. I saw a crack in the top of wheel pant the other day. I removed the wheel pants and found that the tire has been rubbing and wearing into the top of the wheel pant. I imagine I will need to order new wheel pants to fix the problem. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

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aerhed · #2 10-21-2011, 09:41 PM

13 views & no help yet? I'll try. You should have like a 3/4" space between top of tire & fairing, minimum. Either not set up right or has had taller tires installed since built. That's repairable, but all the holes need plugging with epoxy/flox & glass cloth backing. Then it needs to be realigned with proper spacing and new holes drilled. I think you need to check the other one also. I'm assuming you aren't the builder? A new fairing would almost certainly take more work to finish and I think you'd have to do a pair.

floridawing · #3 10-21-2011, 10:11 PM

Thanks for the help. I am not the orginal builder. I put on new tires, 5:00x5, this is when the problem started.

Mike Macon · #4 10-21-2011, 10:24 PM

I bought a 6A in 2004 and the wheel pants looked almost identical to yours. I decided I would be replacing them with new style pants eventually and kept an eye on the wear and the length of the crack on top. Seven years and 500+ hours later nothing has changed.
I am still thinking about replacing them. I wonder if I am going to be writing a similar reply in another seven years?

YMMV

DanH · #5 10-22-2011, 04:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by floridawing

Thanks for the help. I am not the orginal builder. I put on new tires, 5:00x5, this is when the problem started.

Not all "same size" tires have the same rolling diameter. If you don't want to re-mount the wheel pants (or buy new pressure recovery pants) you might consider going back to whatever brand of tire was previously installed.

The glass repair is really easy...sand both inside and outside surfaces w/ 40~80 grit. Sand from the outside to a feather edge along the crack. Lay a 3 or 4 ply patch on the inside, and one or two plies outside, using ~9 oz fabric. Sand outside to contour, fill, finish, paint as required.

Check the pant on the other side...it may need a few glass plies on the inside.

Flybuddy2 · #6 10-22-2011, 04:55 AM

Curious--were the new tires Monster Retreads from Desser?

floridawing · #7 10-22-2011, 08:24 AM

I purchased the new tires from Vans. I wanted to go with the OEM tires to try to aviod any problems. I had read threads on this forum about switching to other brand tires and having problem because the wheel pants had been made for the tires on the airplane when the wheel pants were fit. When I get back home I will double check the brand of tires I have. Thanks.