Mike Gretz

My Feedback: (1)

One more thing.

Like Martin, I found that the bolts provided for mounting the wheel fenders were too long, almost touching the wheels. With any side force at all, like on take off or landing, the bolts were going to dig into the wheels. So I cut them off with a dremel abrasive cutoff wheel.

Holding onto such small bolts while cutting them off is not something you want to do by hand, or with a pliers. And clamping the bolt in a vise is not secure enough either. Nothing worse than having the tiny bolt go flying across the shop, never to be seen again.

Here's a technique for cutting off bolts that I learned from a gunsmith friend of mine.

!) Screw the bolt into the proper hole of a common "screw checker". If you don't have screw checkers in both US and metric, you ought to get them. They only cost a few bucks. Any tool shop will have them, or there is always ebay or amazon.

Screw the bolt into the screw checker from the top. Tighten a hex nut against the top surface of the screw checker to secure the bolt in place. The distance from the head of the bolt to the bottom side of the screw checker is the length you will end up with.

2) Use your dremel cut-off wheel to cut off most of the excess bolt sticking out the backside of the screw checker. Don't try to cut it off flush with the checker. Just close for now.

3) Take it to your bench grinder and carefully grind the remaining excess bolt perfectly flush with the backside of the screw checker.

There you go. The bolt is now the right length, the end is nice and smooth without burrs, and best of all ... the bolt is not lost on the floor of the shop.