Nose wheel and gear leg fairing progress

Now that the main wheel fairings are done, we started attachment of the nose wheel fairing. To our surprise, but consistent with other reports on VAF, the fairing sat high enough (with the Vans-recommended spacer block) that it was hitting the diagonal part of the nose gear leg, so it had to be trimmed quite a bit further to fit in the right spot. Once it did, we transferred the holes from the brackets to the fairing (using the magnet technique) and then trimmed the openings to give enough clearance:

Nose wheel fairing top hole, elongated to clear the nose gear leg

Marking the required tire clearance on the bottom of the fairing for trimming

I'm glad I opened up the tug holes slowly, because they were initially misaligned - opened them up in the right direction with the Dremel tool, and then added the tug guard mod and its doubler:

Misaligned tug bar hole with correct position marked

Tug guard match-drilled to nose gear fairing

Tug guard doubler inside nose wheel fairing

I also installed the hinges on the main leg fairings in preparation for attaching them: 

Main gear leg fairing with hinge match-drilled

Countersunk main gear leg fairing hinge attachment holes

Inside of the hinge riveted to the main gear leg fairing

Hinge fully riveted to main gear leg fairing

I then used the templates to cut the required openings on the nose leg fairing:

Nose gear leg fairing after initial trimming with the template

Next we still need to finish the nose wheel fairing, then actually attach the leg fairings.

Time lapse:


Total gear leg and wheel fairing rivets: 60
Total gear leg and wheel fairing time: 56.8h