Strut Farings

[Neil 17]

I recently had my struts rebuilt using 1" tubing because of rust on the old tubes. I now need to paint and install the faring. There in lies my problem, what should I use to do this without buying Kit Fox's plastic faring ?  I'm thinking the wood faring was available from Avid years back. So what do we use now ? Thanks, Neil

Edited 17 Jan 2020 by Neil

[Allen Sutphin 705]

A few options, foam carved using a hot wire setup, remake new wood fairings, make fiberglass ones, etc. Only ones I know of that you can buy off the shelf are the Kitfox ones. QCU Challenger did sell plastic fairings for 1" tubes for around $125 in 10' lengths.  Welcome to the world of homebuilding. Sometimes buying isn't an option. Fabricating something is the only option.

[sioux201 84]

Check out  streamlined fairings at U-Fly-IT,  aerolite 103 .

 Years ago I made a jig four splitting his  vinyl  streamline fairings, 

[1avidflyer 1983]

I know that TJay made wood fairings for his Kitfox 1 build, and are somewhere in his posts of the build.  Here is maybe a simple solution, take some ranch style casing, cut it down with a table saw to the right width so two pieces equal the width of the lift strut when they are glued together.  Fit it to the strut tube with more table saw work, and glue on with epoxy.  JImChuk

[Neil 17]

Thank you for the input.Looks like I'll be building the farings out of wood.

[Neil 17]

Thanks Jim. That looks like something I can do. My model C project is coming along real good. Thanks for everyone's help. N R

[Yamma-Fox 403]

Looks like you made up your mind but the kitfox kit is a 1 hour job.  If "looks" are paramount then build your own but with the kitfox ones you just trim, snap on and fly.  

The kit comes with an aluminum cuff for the lower union of the two struts but I didn't see a reason to mess with it.  If I ordered again I'd just buy the 4 snap fit plastic fairings.

Edited 19 Jan 2020 by Yamma-Fox

[Neil 17]

If the Fox fairing's are less with out the cuff I'll look into it. Thanks

[Yamma-Fox 403]

To give you an idea of how they look unpainted and "slapped on" - here's a couple kinda crappy pics of my KF5 with the snap on plastic fairings kitfox sells.

[Neil 17]

Fairings look good on a real good looking Fox !! Thanks !

 

[RJGerstnecker 7]

   Hi all 

I remember reading something about liftstrut faring,for avid .the wood epoxied to the steal,combination makes the rated straight.

in original kits 

thx Bwell rjg