I don't think you'd have a problem taking 4" off the inside of these ailerons. They go all the way into the side of the fuse. That makes it a little twitchy, but puts them directly in the prop wash...a good thing for 3d, too much for pattern type stability.

Yes, you could just add a ton of expo and shorten the throws to nada....but you'd be losing the resolution of your servo if you have to go down too much, and then you better have some high end digitals to hold these things centered.

I'd just cut them.

The gear: replace it with a bolly carbon fiber f3a standard swept. I haven't replaced mine yet, but I'm sure I will down the road. These durals only weigh 3.4 ozs, so the weight difference is there, but not enough to sweat over just yet. I'm waiting to see how much it weighs when I finish it, I replaced a lot of the wood with some spare contest balsa I had laying around.

-Mike