Matt Dralle
Site Admin
Joined: 08 Nov 2005
Posts: 25858
Location: Livermore CA USA
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 Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 9:44 am Post subject: RV9-List: Heads Up On Wheel Pant Fiberglass Quality... |
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Dear Listers,
I took delivery of an RV-8 QB finish kit around September 2008. Last weekend I started tackling the installation of the wheel pants. The first thing I noticed on inspection of the wheel pants was how horrible the quality was. The front piece didn't fit the back piece and the flange shoulder on the back pieces were not straight. Getting a even an "okay" fit was nearly impossible. The other issue was the quality of the fiberglass itself. On the rear part of the back piece, the epoxy resin was completely spider-cracked on both sides and on both pants. It was nothing a few more coats of resin and a bunch of sanding couldn't fix, but who wants to do that? Needless to say, I was fairly demoralized by the fact that there was really no way I was going to be able to make them really fit together "perfect".
But, I plowed ahead anyway and started trying to mount them to the Grove Airfoiled gear. I had a lot of trouble getting them to fit correctly onto the landing gear. The main issue seemed to be that they are too small at the bottom and don't fit over the brake caliper without touching. I kept thinking that I must just not have them in the correct position, so I kept hogging out a little more glass here and there with the Dremel tool until basically the holes were all too big (for the gear leg and for the wheel). I finally found a couple of builder web sites where others have had the same issue with the brake caliper interference and they added a 2.5" "blister" to pooch out over the area that rubs. But by this time it was too late for that first set of pants.
But here's the interesting part. Since I had basically destroyed both of the original pants trying to get them to fit, I decided to just order up a replacement set, take a sedative, and start over again on the whole thing. The new wheel pants arrived from Van's yesterday. The difference in quality between these replacement units and the ones from last year is incredible! The seams are nearly perfect on the replacements and only required a bit of sanding on the front part to get a *perfect*, and I mean *perfect* fit between the front and back halves. The consistency of the fiberglass layups is 100% better on the new units, and that seam at the top was already so flat, I didn't even have to sand it down. There are no spider cracks in the glass anywhere. I haven't actually weighed them, but replacements feel like they might be somewhat lighter as well.
Obviously Van's switched fiberglass vendors at some point in the last 10 months and the switch was well worth it. I've attached a couple of photos of the Circa September 2008 and Circa June 2009 sets I received. The only similarity is in the overall shape.
FYI
Matt Dralle
RV-8 #82880 N998RV
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