Thanks :0
I have never had an issue with wheel pants, once I started mounting them how I do now. There are probably a few ways to do it, but the key point is that the axle bolt goes through both sides of the wheel pant. I use plastic spacers to keep the wheel in place. The wheel pant gets clamped to the landing gear with one nut. Second nut either on the inside of the gear if you started the bolt from outside the wheel pant, or second nut goes on outside of wheel if you started the bolt from inside the gear. I don't use any pins to keep the pant in place. So the wheel pant is prevented from being pulled off to the side, and free to rotate to absorb energy.
I haven't tried using plywood (or carbon) blocks inside the wheel pants yet, that could work too, lots of guys do it. I think one killer for wheel pants is that they are often secured to the gear on one side, the opposite side is not secured, so the wheel pant flexes and all the load goes into the one side that's clamped to the gear. I have destroyed plenty of sets of wheel pants until I started running the bolt all the way through. It looks best with a stainless button head screw from the outside.