It's definitely love-hate with wheel pants. Some scale planes look naked without them, such as most Waco's, and I'll just deal with the problems (read: make lots of repairs and touch-ups) in order to maintain that look. Otherwise, I'll leave them off. I find that the bigger the plane, the less problems there are, mainly because the wheels are larger, clearance between the pant and grass is greater, and the pant itself is usually more robustly made. It was odd to see this thread first thing when I signed on, because fixing wheel pants was just what I was doing in the shop 15 minutes ago, I got on-line while the epoxy was setting.