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Cost of sticking back on Wheel Fairings

Because aircraft owners have marmite views on wheel pants, they tend to be either well minded and part of the aeroplane or taken off in anger. Leaving the relative merits and drawbacks aside. I took a notion to fit the original wheel pants back on the 206 while I’m waiting for the DAR to come. The costs involved are surprising:

€600 to buy it’s old wheel pants off a previous owner
€Free shipping in the PA32 as it was passing by the pickup point for the spats
€150 to paint them
€300 to buy the fairings that cover off the brake caliper
€550 for new hardware to fit them
€150 labour (5hrs @ 30ph by the time you have it all apart and brakes bled again)

So roughly €1750 is the cost to a Cessna owner who fancies a set of wheel spats and has nothing to start with except the axle nuts. If you are taking off a set, the next guy will appreciate it if you keep all the parts together! I will post the after picture once I get them fitted.

Buying, Selling, Flying
EISG, Ireland

And if the spats had needed filler and rubbing before painting?
About to do this on a small set, but the time will be ours, as two OAPs and a P to F aircraft.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

Maoraigh wrote:

And if the spats had needed filler and rubbing before painting?

I just hand them to my spray paint guy and ask him to sort it. I probably could save some money by using used hardware I have or find it on Ebay. Other than that I couldn’t do it much cheaper. I put wheel pants on a 150 I had a few years ago, people said it made a big difference to the perception of it.

Buying, Selling, Flying
EISG, Ireland

What are the reasons for flying without wheel fairings? I recall from my PA28 flying days that the performance difference is huge – about 7kt.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

What are the reasons for flying without wheel fairings? I recall from my PA28 flying days that the performance difference is huge – about 7kt.

If you’re on a grass field it is difficult to keep them clean during the wet season. In my club we take them off sometime in October or November and put them back on in March or April.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

In my club, only one C172 still has it’s main wheel fairings. The people managed to break the nose wheel ones with bad landings or clumsiness with the tow bar very quickly.

The main wheel ones tend to break on rough fields and hard landings if they make ground contact.
I’d love to put them back on for both performance and asthetic reasons, but of some there is not enough left to repair, and the people who want to fly hours, not distance, are not interested in performance gains.

EDXN, ETMN, Germany

30 euros an hour for labor? Wow. In the US I pay double that, and my guy is super cheap.

I remove and reinstall my wheel pants myself. Total cost $0. :)

Kent, UK

On my 1959 C175 the still original fairings are made of polyester which is prone to crack around the axles. My maintenance shop sent them for overhaul to a specialist in polyester and carbon race bike fairings. They did a marvelous job in bringing them back to an „as new“ condition. For the looks of it, it was worth the price.

LSZG

What a beauty Bleriot (the whole plane).

Goes for WilliamF as well… :-)

ESOW, Sweden

Bleriot wrote:

On my 1959 C175

That could be a real sleeper airplane. My friend had been doing some work on his one, he’s only flown it for an hour. It is supposed to have alot more power than the 172C he sold, and retain the nice flying characteristics of the older 172 models. From what I read Cessna only really pulled the plug on it over the cylinder scoring issues, which only affected some airplanes. Many owners made tbo with no complaints. They are supposed to be lovely and quiet inside!

Buying, Selling, Flying
EISG, Ireland
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