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Trailing edge fairing seperation

J

jwilbur

Well Known Member
Just finished my front gear leg fairing. Upon mounting it the trailing edge separates. Tightening the screws causes the trailing edge to flare and separate behind the hinge. 1/4" right behind the mount points and 1/8" otherwise. Back out the screws and the gap goes to zero.

One option I can think of is to do the same "liquid shim" that we do for the wheel pants to allow the screws to tighten but not squeeze the fairing. The other option is maybe do nothing. The flare is significant to me, but probably not to anyone else unless they'll be crawling around under the airplane. Not sure how significant this would be in flight.

Thought I'd ask to see if anyone else found the same thing and what you did to solve the problem if anything.
 
It sounds like the fairing is mounted two far rearward. Note page 48-21 figure 2 where the hinge is notched.
 
Last edited:
It's right on fore-aft. It's a little low though so the angle of the brackets don't touch the fairing. .... I think I'm going to try the liquid shim later this week and see how it goes.

If anyone had a similar issue let me know. I'm curious to know if this is a common issue. The plans are very ambiguous here (my opinion) providing no guidance about what "best fit" means.
 
Update

I did the "liquid shim" on this and it worked out very nicely. I Driledl a couple holes for the epoxy/flox/cab-o-sil to be squirted in and sanded the inside area. Then I greased up the attach brackets and screws and the nearby hinge with Johnson's Paste Wax, inserted the hinge pin, set the fairing up nice and straight, clamped the rear end where it was flaring out, adjusted it nice and straight, put the screws in just far enough to keep it steady, then squirted in the epoxy mixture (heavy on the cab-o-sil to keep it from running).

Next day take it off, clean it up, reinstall and I now have a front leg fairing I can screw in nice and tight and Not have the trailing edge flare out. The whole process took about 90 minutes.

Well worth the effort for me. Now every time I look at it I won't feel like a monkey. (no offence intended, monkeys).
 
.....we're on the subject...

Have any of you found the hinge rivets to start smoking on the gear-leg fairing?
They are countersunk rivets in FG and the material is rather thin...

-Marc
 
Plummit said:
Have any of you found the hinge rivets to start smoking on the gear-leg fairing?
They are countersunk rivets in FG and the material is rather thin...

-Marc
Click to expand...

No. Going on four years of flying and I can't even find most of the rivets. A little micro and the paint did a pretty good job of covering them.
 
Plummit said:
Have any of you found the hinge rivets to start smoking on the gear-leg fairing?
They are countersunk rivets in FG and the material is rather thin...

-Marc
Click to expand...

I was a little concerned about how thin they are and decided to use NAS rivets (AN3 with AN2 heads); very shallow countersink.
 
Plummit said:
Have any of you found the hinge rivets to start smoking on the gear-leg fairing?
They are countersunk rivets in FG and the material is rather thin...

-Marc
Click to expand...

As with all rivets in fiberglass, I put a bid or two over the rivet heads. Micro on top of that and sand to fair. No problems.

Carl
 
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