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RV-10 Main Wheel Pants Install

Blizzard

Well Known Member
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I’m just about done with the build. Only thing remaining is putting the wings on and the gear fairings. Nose wheel pant mostly done. Struggling with the main gear wheel pants. I’ve viewed others builders logs but not seeing much mentioned about bending the brackets as required. After rough alignment there seems to be a quite a significant gap between the wheel pant and the rear portion of the bracket. Bending it seems very difficult due to its thickness. Determining the gap between the forward half and the bracket is not viewable due the gel coat. Even if I sand the gel coat in those areas I don’t think I’ll be able to see the gap between the brackets and fairing. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
 
A photo would be handy to understand what you're looking at, however if it's the gap between the screw hole flats and pant wall, I filled the gap between the bracket and pant with flox. I did not bend the brackets very much. My process was to drill #30 holes, apply flox and cleco into place to let cure, probably a 1/8" to 3/16" gap for me.
 
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A photo would be handy to understand what you're looking at, however if it's the gap between the screw hole flats and pant wall, I filled the gap between the bracket and pant with flox. I did not bend the brackets very much. My process was to drill #30 holes, apply flox and cleco into place let cure, probably a 1/8" to 3/16" gap for me.
same here.
 
I’m just about done with the build. Only thing remaining is putting the wings on and the gear fairings. Nose wheel pant mostly done. Struggling with the main gear wheel pants. I’ve viewed others builders logs but not seeing much mentioned about bending the brackets as required. After rough alignment there seems to be a quite a significant gap between the wheel pant and the rear portion of the bracket. Bending it seems very difficult due to its thickness. Determining the gap between the forward half and the bracket is not viewable due the gel coat. Even if I sand the gel coat in those areas I don’t think I’ll be able to see the gap between the brackets and fairing. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
It will not help with your current fairings, but we make carbon wheel fairings for most RV models that come with all hardware and require relatively little effort to install. We are the exclusive producer of these fairings, design by Ken Krueger, former chief engineer for Van's Aircraft and owner of Sky Designs Aero. See aerosouth.net
 
You might get some helpful ideas from this thread.

 
You want a gap of 1/8 to 1/4, because you are going to create a flox pad that fills this gap. Done well, it will have raised edges that fit neatly around the edges of the mounting bracket fingers. The flox pad gives the attachment points strength and durability. Without it the holes would quickly enlarge.
 
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