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Finding Wheel Pant Centerline

T

tx_jayhawk

Well Known Member
Are there any good ways to find centerline on the main wheel pants? I tried the laser trick, but that is deceiving as I found you can align it on the center points of the ends and it could still be off center.

Thanks,
Scott
7A Almost Done
 
I tape a string to the trailing edge, then stretch it to the nose - those two points are fairly easy to find "by eye". Then I "twang" it a bit to let it find a stright shot between those points. A bit more art than engineering, but it has worked for me.

Paul
 
Centerline

I used a plumb bob from centerline to floor, then popped a chalk line. Measured off of it. Worked fine.
 
I Used Gravity

After some headscratching, I decided to take advantage of Newtonian law: I taped a length of line to the trailing edge of the wheel pant, then dangled the wheel pant on its end as you would a plumb bob. I noted the location on the nose where it touches the floor and marked that contact point as center.

22krci.jpg


Using a Sharpie, I drew that "centerline" on the bottom of the wheelpant and used it as a reference to cut in the tire opening.
 
Another cool (wet) technique that my Dad came up with was to immerse whatever object that you were trying to line up in a pool of water and then "tag" reference points with a grease pencil (china marker). The water will not lie to you...
We used this technique on the nose of the cowl when trying to mask out some paint lines around the nose air intakes. It works great on compound curves...my Dad always seemed to have a rabbit in his hat when it came to head-scratchers like this.
 
Wrap a string around the wheelpant starting at the trailing edge from one side, then around the nose, then to the trailing edge of the other side. Take the string off, and mark 1/2 of the distance off...voila there's your center on the nose.
 
finding centerlines on pant

tinman said:
Another cool (wet) technique that my Dad came up with was to immerse whatever object that you were trying to line up in a pool of water and then "tag" reference points with a grease pencil (china marker). The water will not lie to you...
We used this technique on the nose of the cowl when trying to mask out some paint lines around the nose air intakes. It works great on compound curves...my Dad always seemed to have a rabbit in his hat when it came to head-scratchers like this.
Click to expand...

I'm trying to find centerline on my pants both on top and sides and I'm be deceived with the string method cause it will move even if taught and the nose pant has a ridge that seems like the top but it is off to one side. This water method looks like a way to get centerlines after using gravity method to find forward most point.

Any other goodvways to find the fore and aft points and then draw a centerlines
 
Rick6a said:
After some headscratching, I decided to take advantage of Newtonian law: I taped a length of line to the trailing edge of the wheel pant, then dangled the wheel pant on its end as you would a plumb bob. I noted the location on the nose where it touches the floor and marked that contact point as center.

22krci.jpg


Using a Sharpie, I drew that "centerline" on the bottom of the wheelpant and used it as a reference to cut in the tire opening.
Click to expand...

No pics, but very close to Rick's method. I squared up the 2 halves and held them together with clecos. I drilled a hole slightly undersized to a nail and drove the nail in the middle of the rear tail of the pant and hung the assembly upside down like Rick did. I put a spoonful of water in the front of the wheelpant, left it for 5 minutes so it stopped wiggling and marked the center of the front based on the water droplet. Pretty easy to eyeball string lines once you have a center point front and back. Much simpler than it sounds!!
 
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