Wood Wheel Pants

[Steve Dwyer]

I'm looking for videos/instructions for fabricating wheel pants.

Steve

[Dan McEntee]

   Go to YouTube and the Walt Brownell Channel for a big selection of Windy videos. There are several other collections of Windy videos there also and I would imagine collectively they are all on YouTube.  Lots of stunt articles published over the years also that had built up wheel pants. Just looking through the AMA's plans list should at least give you the month/year/title of magazines with of a wealth of articles for stunt models. Search the building forums here on Stunthanger also. I'm sure it's been covered before!
  Type at you later,
  Dan McEntee

[Steve Berry]

Sparky also has several videos on the StuntHangar channel.

Steve

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

[Lauri Malila]

I found some old photos, I hope you find them useful.
The pants are a little under 8" long and ready-to-paint weight for the pair was 14g. The steel shafts + washers + nuts weight 9g, they could as well be made from aluminium to save some weight.
The pants are carved from light (1/2") balsa halves and hollowed to 1/16" wall thickness. They are covered both in- and outside with 3/4oz. glass cloth, and some more gf layers near the mounting elements. There is threaded (M2) dural inserts in the aircraft plywood mounting elements. The pants are then screwed to 1mm  gf/cf plates that are clamped between the shaft shoulder and lg leg.
L

[Lauri Malila]

..one more.

[FLOYD CARTER]

I learned my lesson with wheel pants.  I built a scale/stunt GeeBee, Scale/stunt Lockheed Sirius with wheel pants when we flew in the airport parking area.   That was taken away and we have just grass.  I can't fly those planes anymore.

[Steve Dwyer]

All good stuff, Windys description of flying off grass vs tarvia helped answer my questions on ground clearance dimensions.

Thanks

[Curare]

I found some old photos, I hope you find them useful.
The pants are a little under 8" long and ready-to-paint weight for the pair was 14g. The steel shafts + washers + nuts weight 9g, they could as well be made from aluminium to save some weight.
The pants are carved from light (1/2") balsa halves and hollowed to 1/16" wall thickness. They are covered both in- and outside with 3/4oz. glass cloth, and some more gf layers near the mounting elements. There is threaded (M2) dural inserts in the aircraft plywood mounting elements. The pants are then screwed to 1mm  gf/cf plates that are clamped between the shaft shoulder and lg leg.
L

They are works of art Lauri.

[the original Steve Smith]

Here is a video tutorial made by Bob 'Sparky' Storick the owner of this site:

[the original Steve Smith]

Here is another one. Starts with the design.

[Phil J]

Steve, 

There is a very nice article from Bob Hunt in Stunt New May / June 2015 on Wheel Pants It starts on Page 35.  It's very well written, as are all of Bob's journals.  There is a really nice section in the writeup that addresses
wheel pant alignment.

Happy Flying!

Phil J.

[Steve Dwyer]

Thanks Phil, I'll check it out.

Steve

[FLOYD CARTER]

My GeeBee scale/stunt has commercial fiberglass wheel pants from the R/C world. These might still be available in different sizes.  A computer search might find the source again.  Fiberglass sure beats having to carve them out of balsa/ply.

[Steve Dwyer]

I fly on grass, I'm looking for the thinnest 2 or 2.5 in dia. very light wheels to fit into the wood wheel skirts. Brodak doesn't provide wheel thickness. Anyone have any recommendations?

Steve

[Phil J]

Steve,

Dubro makes a narrow foam wheel,  The dimensions on DUB275SSL are 2.75" x .645 (just over 5/8) with a 1/8" axle hole.  Might be worth a look although they are a little bigger diameter than your looking for.

Happy Flying,

Phil J

[Paul Smith]

The old Dave Brown "poker chip" plastic wheels were the thinnest wheels available.  They won't last too long on pavement.  For pavement flying, you need the Don's racing wheels which are both thin and durable.

[Ken Culbertson]

There is a whole line of very cheap spoked plastic wheels, usually yellow or white on EBay and Amazon or the Chinese sites.  They are very thin and work fine BUT they ware out quickly.  The foam rubber wheel is easily replaced and if you bush them they are OK in pants.  The ones I have on my profile are 4 years old and still working fine.  I bushed them with a ball bearing.

If weight is not an issue and you fly over pavement the narrow hard rubber racing wheels are what we used "back in the day"

Ken

[EricV]

Randy Smith included wood wheel pants instructions on most of his SV series plans...

I did them that way, they came out very light, even with the plywood insert and blind nut hardware installed... my goal was always to have both pants installed at a 1/2  ounce each or less fully painted and usually could hit the mark.

Sorry for some of the cell phone pic's, they were just documentary for myself at the time... didn't even review them to check if in focus, heh, but you get the gist.

EricV

[Steve Dwyer]

I did discover in my on the shelf Vector 40 kit Randy's description for building wood wheel pants. The Skylark build I'm wrapping up never had wheel skirts so I'll follow Randy's method along with several other "split shell" builds I've found including Windy U's.

Thanks also for the wheel sourcing info. Gotta get moving on the skirts before flying weather is upon us here in upstate NY. Still getting snow today however, so we have a bit of time left.

Steve