Brief Description: Pants are on...and that's always a good thing
Last night I was able to get the right wheel pant in the correct position for install. Today, the first tast was to finalize the alignment and mark the 2 mounting holes with a sharpened bolt head. I found it's extremely easy to grind down the head of a standard AN bolt by putting it in a drill and spinning it at an angle on a grinding wheel. Both surfaces are moving so getting a nice even tip is very simple and fast. I then installed them right behind the inside walls of the pant so that a good wack with a hammer would mark the spot for drilling. I then removed the pant, measuren the length of the sharpened bolt and used it as a reference for my pant hard points. This was not following the instructions but it also saved me a lot of time and works great. I then mounted the Pine hardpoints over the new dimpled hole with 5 min. flox and clecos and drilled through to 1/4". I then re-installed the pants to check every angle and position. After seeing a good fit I layed up flox corners and 1 ply Bid over each hardpoint per plans.
Note: I noticed that 1 pant angles out a little more than the other in the roll axis. I know this won't make a difference in flight or hardly be detectable on the ground so I may leave it. Spending the last 3 days on concrete has taken motivation away from my perfectionist side, not to mention my itching to fly... we'll see how I feel about it tomorrow :) I'm also debating whether or not to finish the installation until test flying. If by any chance my Toe In angle is off, it would mean major re-work to fit the pants again and I can avoid that by concluding this later.....hmmmm.
