A lot of work was done in the recent days to make sure the spats for the main wheels have a nice fit.
The washer was epoxied in place:
With a iron angle profile screwed to the bracket there was sufficient leverage to improve the bends to match the shape of the lids of the spats:
With wooden spacers the vertical alignment was assured:
With a laser and wooden structure the horizontal alignment was assured:
With small (Christmas) lights that fitted in the M5 rivnuts the location of the holes could be determined:
The right lid didn’t had a nice fit and I didn’t want to bend the bracket any further so I removed the fiberglass and rebuild that spot with multiple layers of fiberglass to match the shape of the bracket:
10 rivnuts were added with washers epoxied into place:
The transition of the 2 pieces was corrected with epoxy filler. Aluminium tape was used to make sure the filler didn’t stick to the lid:
The space between the main gear leg and the spats wasn’t equal. The top of the spats were removed, the gear leg with dummy brake-line were wrapped with multiple layers silicone tape and aluminium tape and rebuild with fiberglass:
Perfect spacing around:
The problem with the tire clearance was that the spats are not wide enough on the rear side, to fix this a cut was made to widen the spat:
Rebuild was done with multiple layers of fiberglass on the inside and outside and made smooth with epoxy filler:
To prevent the holes in the fiberglass become enlarged during flight due to vibrations, 5 mm bushings were designed. With a reamer the holes got enlarged to 7 mm and the bushings glued in place with JB-Weld:
The inside of the spats got painted with a mix of epoxy resin, paint and hardener. This prevents scratching the black paint of the attachment brackets and makes cleaning of the inside easier since the surface is a lot smoother:
After many iterations of filling, sanding, painting the final coat (until final paint) was applied:
