Wheel Pant Intersection Fairings

Time: 4 Hours

I worked the fairings a little more trying to get the aft edge to sit nice. With these cut as they are scribed from RVBits.com the aft edge sticks out around 3/8″ aft of the gear leg fairing. I didn’t like this look and wanted the aft edge of the two fairings to meet so that it looked like one vertical line from top down to the curve. This causes the aft edge of the intersection fairing to open which I was ok with but I wanted the rest to be tight. You have a couple options from the instructions, one being to use a zip tie through a hole drilled through both sides and zip it tightly closed. The second is a small screw and nut to close it up. I didn’t like the zip tie idea so pondered the screw. What I came up with was to use a nutplate on the inside of the fairing with the threaded part portuding through a drilled hole. This eliminates a need for a nut that looked like an eyesore to me. 

Now I can use a screw that is cut to the perfect length and only have a small bit sticking out and barely noticeable if you really look. Once I was happy with that fit I countersunk all the holes for the tinnerman washers. The epoxy had cured from the holes I filled in the last post so I sanded those down and and drilled for the nutplates that will hold the intersection fairings on. Using the pneumatic squeezed I made quick work of riveting them on. 

While I was already riveting I did the two air valve doors as well but I used blind rivets as they helped my get them to lay flat as I squeezed them as the spring action tried to lift them up. 

I put all the parts in place and attached the intersection fairings and did some final sanding. These things are so nice and thin that I decided to just put a slight bevel along the edge to give a nice clean look. 

So I haven’t decided what if anything I will do with top of the fairing where it splits. I may just leave it and be happy with it. So now I just need to work all the surface of the wheel pants so I can fill pin holes and prime them as well as the fairings. 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*