What can we do to keep our wheel pants in good condition? What can we do when they start to crack - repair? How? Does Nitro fuel affect them? If so can they be/should t hey be fuel proofed from inside?

To keep your wheel pants looking good, leave them off the plane unless it is a static display. taking off and landing in grass is the hardest thing on wheel pants so if you have a paved runway... stay out of the grass. If they crack the fiber glass ones are easily repared with fiberglass resin and a little fiber glass tape on the inside then just sand smooth and repaint. The ABS plastic wheel pants on the other hand once they crack you pretty much have to replace them because any repair you do will be noticable. But the good thing about the plastic ones are the fuel does not effect the color. The fiberglass ones on the otherhand some paints are more suseptable to staining from glow fuel... My Worl Models Ultimate Bipe's cowl was bad for that.

i reinforce my abs wheel pants with fiberglass inside.if you have to make holes anywhere in abs make sure to use a dremmel to smooth out the holes that is where they will crack.hard landings, and like Mr67Stang said landing on grass can cause them to crack.

I love wheel pants nothing looks better and you can see the airplanes attitude easier when in flight. I asked a wheel pants question a couple of days ago on this sight and got a great idea from one of the experienced guys. Get bigger wheels and cut out the wheel pants to fit. For example I have 3" wheels on my tiger II and used a .46 size pants on it. I take off from a paved runway but only land in the grass so I don’t bounce. Never had a problem in about 50 flights so far. To paint them I used automotive paint. I used a primer and then painted then with a couple of different colors. When it was all done I sprayed a couple of heavy gloss coats over it to help protect and harden it. Unfortunately I used Krylon thick gloss and boy am I sorry. It is not fuel proof but automotive gloss is so use that.