Still not happy.

Here’s what I had to do to the bottom of the pants do ensure tire clearances were adequate at the edges. This side was worse than the other.

The problem was that the pants tended to deviate from straight down and pucker inwards just a little. This of course happens in the worst place possible. While I’ve seen lots of pants with that curve at the bottom, it just looked wrong and I had more tire exposed.

The point of pants is to cover as much tire as possible and still have them functional.

The solution was to rebuild just the bottom area with a lot of glass. Then I could thin the glass from the inside and get the clearances needed without the ugly cutout curves.

This took four 16 ply layups, 64plies and a whole day to do.

After a bit of a sand and trim I still didn’t have enough glass on the pant rears. Two more 16 ply layups. Thats 96 plies all up. I did them foil on plastic and two ply thick making 48 operations.

Yes, next up was a lot of grinding and fitting and a great deal of the 96 plies was selectively removed. The pants of course went on and off multiple times and the clearances were reestablished.

You might notice that the internal baffles I spent a couple of days on are now gone. With them in place the pants didn’t quite fit by a tenth of an inch or so. That little bit of flex had gone. An hour of grinding made them a memory. I’m not going to fit another set and that good idea will not be happening. I could make it work, but not this lifetime.

First nose ‘fill’ to get me started. You might notice the front lower edge of the pants look ‘normal’ now.

This gives an idea of the work. See how the right side in the pic is relatively straight where previously it puckered inwardly just a little.

Another shot showing a straight side. The whole problem is that I should have :-
1. Cut out the centers, added an inch and rejoined them
2. Bought pants that really do fit a Long-EZ properly (not ones advertised to do so)
3. Made my own pants from scratch

Lots more fair and fill work but I’m over the hump now. More pics will follow as that proceeds to better illustrate the fine result. If you need pants for your Long-EZ, I am NOT available for the job.