Lower fairing intersections centerline

I am in the process of glueing lower main gear intersection fairings to wheel pants. Flew with screwed for couple hundred hours and didn't like it. Fairings are from RVbits.com very good fit but on painted surface molded looks better.

Where would you split them? Along wheel pant cut all the way up or make a turn to maintain leg fairing centerline?














What would you improve here?

Vlad, I "S" curved mine to sort of split the difference. Came out fine. Never gave it much thought but would probably do it the same again.

I'm away from home right now, no pix.

Fly on!!

Vlad,
I followed the center line of the leg with mine.



When you do the layup for the front lip to overlap the rear piece, you may find that the RV-bit fairing is too thin and flexable to maintain enough of a clamping force to hold itself and the rear piece tight against the leg fairing. I had to clamp the rear half on one side while my layup cured. I also wrapped glass all the way around the front to stiffen things up.

Gary, Nate thanks a ton. Nate how did you finish the trailing edge of the fairing? I intend to glue it. I have a bit of mismatch on one of them.

cln1owner said:

... you may find that the RV-bit fairing is too thin and flexable to maintain enough of a clamping force to hold itself and the rear piece tight against the leg fairing. ...

Click to expand...

So.... I drilled a couple of #40 holes on at the top and in addition to the clamp along the lower trailing edge used clecos to hole it in place. Then filled the holes in the leg faring. The holes in the pant fairing got trimmed off...

Vlad said:

Gary, Nate thanks a ton. Nate how did you finish the trailing edge of the fairing? I intend to glue it. I have a bit of mismatch on one of them.

Click to expand...

I glued them, using clecos to close the gaps until cured. Sand to a nice rounded edge.

Mistake

This is probably going to be obvious to you guys, but be sure to do like Vlad did and epoxy them on in place using the gear leg fairing. I mated mine all up and put some clecos in to hold the intersection fairings in place then removed them.

Put the wheel pants on the bench with them all screwed together then epoxied the intersection fairings on. I was really proud of myself and split them apart basically following the split line on the pants and then to the center of the gear leg.

Got them all faired and sanded and then looked great.....right up until I put them back on the plane and the right one wouldn't go back around the gear leg fairing. The front half fit fine but where the trailing edge was glued together was too tight for the gear leg to go all the way into the edge of it.

This weekend's project is to fix it......somehow.