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

Wheel fairing finishing

I trimmed the forward main wheel fairings to leave plenty of room for the brake hoses to go through underneath the intersection fairings, then primed all the fairings inside and (where not gel coated) outside:

Trimmed forward main wheel fairings at the intersection fairing, for brake lines

Primed wheel fairing inside

Primed intersection fairing

Finally, I bonded the tug guard doublers with some flox and then riveted them:

Tug guards bonded in place with epoxy+flox

Tug guards riveted in place

I still have the nose gear leg fairing to complete, and I've ordered the replacement part for it, but who knows when Vans will actually ship it.

Time lapse:

Total gear leg and wheel fairing rivets: 152

Total gear leg and wheel fairing time: 97.7h

Wheel fairing primer, reassembly and nose gear leg fairing mistake

The wheel fairing brackets had lost quite a bit of primer on their tips from the fitting and filling process, so we touched that up, along with priming a few other parts for other sections:

Fairing brackets and other parts ready for primer (just touching up the brackets)

Fairing brackets and other parts after primer

I then riveted the nutplates to those brackets and reinstalled the brackets and the wheels (hopefully for the last time):

Fairing brackets with nutplates riveted on

Wheel and fairing bracket reinstalled in place

Wheel and fairing bracket reinstalled in place

I also started making progress on attaching the nose gear leg fairing, which was going quite well...until I trimmed the hinge to the specified size (31 1/2") and it was sticking out even though it was supposed to fit inside the fairing...that's when realized I applied the cutting template in the wrong location, and the 27 1/32" distance from the tangent point to the edge of the aft opening was actually 24" instead :( I went back to the video of when I did it, and looks like I aligned the 27" mark with the aft end of that opening rather than the forward one - which is not exactly the error that the manual warns ("Double check that the measurement was taken to the cutout (shaded area) and not to the forward edge of the template...") but not too different...so I'll get back to this part after I receive a new part from Vans.

Nose gear leg fairing with hinge sticking out

The moment I realized my mistake :(

Time lapse:

Total wheel fairing rivets: 140

Total wheel fairing time: 89.8h

Wheel fairing attachment

I sanded the nose wheel fairing gap fills to remove all the excess resin:

Sanded nose wheel fairing gap fills

then final-drilled and countersunk the fairing attachment holes:

Fairing attachment holes countersunk for tinnerman washers

While sanding the gap fills inside the fairing, I got carried away with the Dremel and, not seeing the surface due to the generated dust, ended up poking another hole through the fairing - oops - so I had to patch that up (used 2 layers of fiber on each side of it):

Unintended hole, sanded for patching

I then final-drilled the wheel fairing joint holes and installed all the nutplates that hold the halves together, countersinking for tinnerman washers:

Wheel fairing with joint nutplates installed

Main wheel fairing held together with screws and tinnerman washers

Now that the wheel fairing alignment and rilling is completed, I also removed the main fairing brackets to provide additional clearance from the gear leg, and drilled and countersunk all the nutplate attachment holes:

Main wheel fairing attachment bracket, trimmed to provide clearance from the gear leg

Fairing attachment brackets, with nutplate holes countersunk

Besides the nose leg fairing, now there's only some finishing work to do on this section, notably the joint to the intersection fairings, touching up the primer on those brackets, installing the bracket nutplates and installing the tug guards.

Time lapse:

Total wheel fairing rivets: 108

Total wheel fairing time: 84.4h

Gear leg and nose wheel fairing progress

We aligned the leg fairings and started match-drilling the intersection fairings:

Aligning the gear leg fairing with a laser and plumb bob

Intersection fairing around aligned gear leg fairing

Both intersection fairings match-drilled around aligned gear leg fairing

At this point, it became clear how bad the Vans molds really are - the top ones don't even sit flush when clecoed at two points, and I was still going to have to add more fiberglass layers and finish them - so I stopped and bought the RVBits ones :) those weren't perfect, but were a bit better and were definitely well finished:

Match-drilled RVBits intersection fairing

Match-drilled and enclosed intersection fairing

To bond the bottom intersection fairings to the wheel fairings, we sanded the wheel fairings underneath it, then used resin and flox:

Sanding intersection fairing bonding area

Sanded intersection fairing bonding area

Bonded intersection fairing

Aft wheel and split intersection fairing after bonding

Forward wheel and split intersection fairing after bonding

We then continued with the nose wheel fairing, by filling the gaps around the screws, which was again more challenging than it looks due to the enclosed space:

Filling gaps inside the nose gear fairing

The above obviously gave poor results, but that was then easy to fix on the bench, now that we had a minimal barrier to tighten the screws against:

Nose gear fairing with gaps partially filled

Filling remaining nose gear fairing gaps

Nose gear fairing brackets with re-filled gaps

I also countersunk the tug guards for riveting:

Tug guards with countersunk holes

Next is the nose gear leg fairing and finishing of the nose wheel fairing and intersection fairings.

Time lapse:

Total wheel fairing rivets: 60

Total wheel fairing time: 69.7h

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