Chris,

Good to see you getting back into the air with your Gee Bee. I had to add 1oz of lead to the tail after I installed the Robart gear. This puts the weight of my GB at about 12.25 lbs dry. I can't say that I noticed the extra weight. The pants should be modified to telescope with the struts if you install them because they will contact the ground on a hard landing if you don't. http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5615263/tm.htm

The stock gear without the pants should be reliable on hard landing. If you install the pants over the stock gear you should devise a way to keep the wheels from contacting the pants. Maybe a solution for the stock gear/pants problem would be a similar setup to my telescoping pants. But instead of covering the 1" gap with a solid material, use something flexible like white monokote.

I like my struts with telescoping pants. I've given them the acid test and they've held up well. It might be possible to develop an equally robust setup with the wire gear with flexible pants. I bought my struts thinking that they would be a "drop in fix" for hard landing but noticed that the pants would contact the ground in that event anyway after having installed them. I guess I would have tried flexible pants with the stock gear first If I had realised the "bottoming out problem" with the Robart gear before I bought them. I hope some of that helps.