Wheel Pants Frustrations

[todehnal]

I sure would appreciate some thoughts from anyone who has added wheel pants. I finished trimming the wheel openings, to the scribe line. When I test mated the nose and tail together, I find that the size of the wheel opening in the nose, doesn?t match up with the wheel opening in the tail. In fact the bottom corners of the nose, misses reaching the bottom corners of the tail by about one quarter in on each side. I could widen the wheel opening in tail part to match, but it just seems odd.

The second issue is with using the 4 dimples in the sides, to match drill the married nose and tail, to the hefty mounting plates. I have not yet trimmed the back of the nose. It has about 1/8? of material past the scribed trim line. Yet, when I marry the two halves, and check the alignment with the drill guide dimples, I find that the dimples are already too close together to match with the mounting plates. Now, when I trim to the scribe line, this will get worse and will miss being able to use the dimples by about 3/16?

So, do I center the brace, favor the front? the back? or, does it matter???

Anyone else experience similar frustrations? Your thoughts greatly appreciated

Tom

 

[dick seiders]

Tom, I am at the priming stage at present as I completed fitting the pants recently after wearing out my knees. My suggestion to you is go back over the plans instructions and follow them to the letter. They still won't fit perfectly but will be close. Glas is a funny thing to work with, and it seldom does what you think it will do after sanding, cutting, etc. I urge you to fit the pants and add the internal glas to lock on the pants mounting bar position. Now you have a starting point. I had to mess with the screws fitup on front to rear , but i think thats a normal experience with matching up the halves. When you finally get them to mate up you may have to add a little glas to close the gaps you describe. It all depends on how critical you are about the fitup. After all we are dealing with wheel pants here, and once they are painted and in position they are not as critical as the cowl, canopy etc. As I said it depends on how you see it. With glas you can take them to a perfect level if you want to invest the time and effort. I don't recommend that, but that's me.
Dick Seiders

 

[todehnal]

Thanks for the reply, but now it's time to fess up to the fact that I am the dummy!
I was trying to match up the end holes in the brace. The plans, clearly, show that the second holes from one end are to be used. If I follow the plans, I have plenty of room to trim the nose to the scribe line, with no problem.
So, it's time to "build on"
Thanks, Tom