(Paul Lee) wrote:

All you EZ/Cozy builders what do you put under the nose to protect
the fuselage when it is down? Extra thick paint?

The Vari-Eze and Long-EZ plans called for using a thick piece of
rubber from a used truck tire carved into a "puck". The Vari-Eze
plans had you screw the puck to a plywood backing via countersunk
holes drilled into the puck and then bond the assembly to the upper
part of the nose gear strut with flox. The Long-EZ plans had you
carve a flange around the tire puck and bond the puck to the fuselage
with 4 layers of BID. A number of Vari-Eze flyers had their bonded
tire pucks work lose and many Vari-Eze flyers subsequently changed the
bonding method and location to that of the Long-EZ plans. A few folks
used a hockey puck but others deemed a hockey puck too hard for good
"grazing position" traction on smooth hard surfaces. One fellow with
a hockey puck bumper had his Long-EZ scoot away after hand propping in
1987. The runaway EZ collided with a C-152. Bad show all around.
His conclusion, "Hockey pucks are designed to slide and it was not
secured to the fuselage properly". I can't give advice one way or
another about hockey pucks because I've never even handled one (born
and raised in Florida). I used a tire puck and installed as per
Long-EZ plans.

David "by the book" O -- http://www.AirplaneZone.com