Gear leg fairing installation

[LettersFromFlyoverCountry]

An RV building pal came over to the hangar last night to get me started on installing the gear leg fairings and explain the process to me. We were in the middle of aligning the fairings via 'the taut string method' and tightening the clamp when the tong on the upper portion cracked.

I guess I'm supposed to put fiberglass layers in there, then put it back on and then set the alignment and then, I guess, clamp it but geez that sounds like a good way to end up with a globby mess up top.

I've heard of some people using Great Foam in the installation process and I'm wondering if there's documentation of this someplace.

[RV7ator]

Don't even bother with the tabs and clamps and reinforcing lay-ups; clunky and not all that strong. You don't needed 'em. Just leave a bit of extra length leg fairing protruding into the lower intersection fairing and install one plate nut to keep the leg fairing from drifting down. Position it as close to the leg as possible to minimize relative movement during the occasional carrier-style landing.

John Siebold

[Ironflight]

Totally concur with John....the tabs broke off on our RV-6 pretty quickly after we retrofitted new-style fairings a couple of years ago. On the new -3, we are just letting them float - held by the uppers and lowers. It's workign out real well.

Paul

[Flying Scotsman]

Can anyone recommend a good site with pictures of how they installed the wheel pants/leg fairings? I'm coming up on this part of the build pretty quickly now, and it's always (it seems) easier to do these "new" tasks if one has pictorial examples to work from...

TIA!

Steve

[LettersFromFlyoverCountry]

I'm writing a piece now with all sorts of pictures. Hope to have it done by the weekend.

There aren't a lot of online resources on this. I think most of the excellent builder sites got tired of updating their sites by the time they got around to this task.

[LettersFromFlyoverCountry]

Originally Posted by Flying Scotsman

Can anyone recommend a good site with pictures of how they installed the wheel pants/leg fairings?

Steve

First installment, the wheel pants, just posted here.

[rv9aviator]

I am at the same stage except I've been flying for a while. I have been dreading this for a while. I can't thank you enough for your time in documenting this for your fellow builders.

[Greg Arehart]

I cut a couple of wood blocks and shaped them so that they fit inside of the fairings, forward of the gear legs - they are kind of bullet-shaped with the aft part of the bullet concave to fit around the gear legs. I then put a dab of epoxy on the concave part, put them in place, aligned the fairings (and thus the blocks inside the fairings, and let the epoxy set up overnight. That left me with alignment blocks that are semi-permanently bonded to the gear legs. After removing the fairings, I took some fiberglass tape (cloth would work, but tape has the nice finished edges) and wrapped it around the wood blocks and the gear leg, and epoxied in place. This basically makes the blocks very sturdy.

After the blocks are in place, I simply drilled a hole in the fairing (toward the center of the airplane, so its less visible) into the upper of the two wood blocks, enlarged the hole and put a nutplate (or platenut, or anchor nut, whatever you call them....) inset into the wood. I then use one screw (8-32 stainless) to hold the fairing in place. The bottom floats to accommodate the flex in the gear leg. Of course the bottom and top ends are also held in place somewhat by the intersection fairings.

Worth noting is that before installing the wood blocks, I cut a notch in each to allow the brake lines to pass.

This has worked well for me so far. I dispensed with the typical upper intersection fairing and instead added a piece of 0.020 Al that bends around the top of the fairing and has a rubber molding where it comes up against the cowling/fuselage, much like the wing intersection fairings. It is held in place by the main fairing screw described above plus two other nutplates that are riveted/epoxied to the leg fairings.

One of these days when it all gets painted up I'll maybe post a few photos.

Greg

[Tony Spicer]

Greg,

Photos already available. Here, here and here.

Tony

[Greg Arehart]

Tony,

Thanks for posting those. I didn't realize that someone else had already done this (or maybe I read your post from long ago and forgot that I had read it).

Cheers,
Greg