Wheel Pants - Shell Replacement

Replacing the ABS plastic wheel pants with new fiberglass shells

After several crack repairs to the original ABS wheel pants I finally took Bob Steward's advance and ordered replacement fiberglass shells from Fletchair. The fiberglass shells are excellent reproductions.

Excellent reproductions.

There are many alignment holes predrilled and the fit and finish is great. Initial work is the removal of the old mounting hardware from the ABS shell. The brackets are both riveted and glued/bonded with some type of caulk adhesive. I ground the heads off the rivets in order to not enlarge the bracket holes by drilling. This was easy since I didnt care if the old shell was damaged by the grinder.

The caulk/adhesive helps to bind the bracket to the shell.

Using a thin putty knife I cut the caulk adhesive and was able to seperate the brackets from the ABS shell. After cleaning, priming and painting the brackets were ready for installation.

Attaching the brackets to the new shells consisted of figuring out which alignment holes worked best for my plane. The alignment holes for the inside bracket were a great fit. There were 4 alignment holes for the outside bracket. Only two of these aligned with the holes in my bracket. It was either the top holes or the bottom holes. Using clecos I assembled the brackets to the pant and mounted it to the plane to see how it looked. As it turned out I used the top two holes and glassed in the bottom two holes. Then I mounted both brackets using clecos and backdrilled the remaining holes in my brackets. I countersunk the rivets on outside of the wheel pant for AN426 rivets and used AN470 for the inside of the pant since that area would be covered by the brake cover. To be continued.