"Jay Honeck" wrote
Yeah, after I posted I started wondering about that. Once everything is
locked in more firmly in place on those wheel pants, only the fiberglass
will be able to flex -- which is probably not a good thing.

I am very much not a fan of allowing a garden-variety A&P (regardless
of years of experience) modify an aircraft at will. Modification
should be approached cautiously, especially when you are modifying
something designed by degreed engineers with years of experience, and
your education is of the vo-tech variety. No amount of field
experience as a mechanic makes you an engineer.

I used to belong to a club that had an aircraft with a rubber doughnut
(sort of like the Mooney gear but not quite) in the tailwheel
assembly. It was a definite weak point - sometimes it would not last
out the season. And it really wasn't seriously structural - it hardly
carried any weight. So this A&P/IA, a real greybeard with decades of
experience and a reputation that brought owners of expensive aircraft
to his nondescript shop from hundreds of miles away, "fixed" the
problem by adding an Aluminum bracket.

It was great for about three years. Then we noticed that the many
minor shocks that were absorbed by (and which eventually destroyed)
the rubber doughnut were now being transmitted to the tail assembly -
which started to crack. It had to be rebuilt at great effort and
expense by another greybeard - who restored everything to factory
design and told us to leave well enough alone.

The FAA codifies this in regulations that govern how alterations are
to be performed. Of course in typical FAA fashion this doesn't make
anything safer - just more expensive - but while the solution is
incompetent, the problem is very real.

Michael