Nose gear leg fairing re-do

I finished reinstalling the wheel after the fairing bracket, by securing the disk with safety wire:

I received the replacement nose gear leg fairing, and this time marked and cut the top opening in the right place (quadruple-checked before cutting :) ):

Template attached to nose gear leg fairing

Original nose gear leg fairing (top) and new one marked in the correct place (bottom)

The template is quite conservative, so it took many iterations of trimming 1/8" at a time until I got it to fully wrap around the gear leg nutplate brackets. I had to trim both the bottom where it contacts the nose wheel fairing, and the top edges to move it aft by about a 1/2" and up about 1/4":

Nose gear leg fairing clamped in place

Next, I followed the instructions a bit out of order - first, I match-drilled the screw holes to have a fixed position for the fairing. I did that by sanding the gel coat off in the area that the underlying bracket would be, which worked well for sighting the holes. This also allowed me to mark where the brackets were, for aligning and trimming the hinges.

Nose gear leg bracket hole visible through a sanded area of the fairing

I then drilled the hinges by the recommended spacing, clamped them to the fairing, and match-drilled from the inside:

Nose gear leg fairing with hinge match-drilled to it

Finally, I trimmed the hinges to avoid the brackets, and trimmed the bottom edge of the fairing to provide the required 3/16" clearance:

Fully trimmed nose gear leg fairing attached in place

With all that done, I countersunk the attachment holes, then primed the hinges and riveted the nutplates and hinges in place:

Nutplates attached to nose gear leg brackets

Nose gear leg fairing with hinges riveted to it

Slightly related, I noticed the tug was removing the paint (and at some point, would be primer) from the attachment point, so I cut some adhesive foam to protect it - it won't last forever either, but it's easy to replace later as needed:

With this, the only part of this section still left (for later) is the top intersection fairings, which will be better done after the wings are attached.

Time lapse:

Total gear leg and wheel fairing rivets: 53

Total gear leg and wheel fairing time: 110.8h