Chipping inside wheel wells?

[AlbertD]

As I'm painting parts for my Birdcage Corsair I was wondering if there might be any chipping or rubbing inside the wheel wells? I was thinking with the plane flying inverted or doing tight turns during a dogfight or whatever the wheels might rub and bump around inside. I can never find pix of these old planes showing that area.

[LSP_K2]

I doubt it.

[Juggernut]

aircraft with retractable landing gear have something called an uplock that prevents those things you outline from happening.  If there is any chipping and/or paint loss inside the wheel wells it will come from environmental sources (i.e., sand blowing into the wells from tire rotation), or chemical (i.e, hydraulic fluid leakage).

Edited December 21, 2020 by Juggernut

[Finn]

As mentioned nothing would be moving around in the wells with the gear retracted, however during takeoff and landings the wheels would kick up dirt and rocks if the well was inline with the wheels like the Corsair:

 

 

Jari

[AlbertD]

Thanks guys. I'll just go with the light grey underside color and dirty them up a bit.

[Oldbaldguy]

Like everyone above says, for the most part, no.  Spinning tires may throw some crud and muddy goo every now and then if the pilot forgets to tap the brakes just after takeoff.  Some airplanes have mud guards inside the wells for that very reason.  However, I have seen some pretty grim wheel wells late in an airplane’s life cycle after it has seen too many overhauls by people either in a hurry or who didn’t care.  They didn’t bother to clean the surfaces well or at all and just sprayed a color coat right over whatever was there - dirt, oil, hydraulic fluid, connectors, wiring, fluid lines, whatever.  Of course, the new paint started flaking and peeling right away, with patches of the previous color showing through.  Mostly white on white, sometimes red over white or vice versa, occasionally white over chromate.  You often seen this happen on older poorly prepped/poorly maintained static display airframes parked outside.  Very scruffy looking and nothing like the abrasion wear usually seen elsewhere.  The look is fun to try to replicate (and actually can look pretty cool), but your modeling time would almost certainly be better spent elsewhere.

[John1]

2 hours ago, AlbertD said:

As I'm painting parts for my Birdcage Corsair I was wondering if there might be any chipping or rubbing inside the wheel wells? I was thinking with the plane flying inverted or doing tight turns during a dogfight or whatever the wheels might rub and bump around inside. I can never find pix of these old planes showing that area.

In most cases you would only have very limited chipping.  The only exception would be for some early F4U’s deployed to primitive island airstrips.  Those planes had the crap kicked out them from operating on rough, packed coral surfaces and undoubtedly some of that coral got kicked up into the wheel wells.  
 

That being said, most wheel wells are pretty filthy, especially on combat deployed aircraft so you can go to town on the grunge.  

[aircommando130]

We would take the MC-130 over to Ie Shima and land there on the coral runway and in addition to all the coral dust inside the airplane 

there would be chunks of coral stuck in the main gear wells. On touchdown it would sound like someone was beating the bottom

of the airplane with a hammer. We had rubber taped around the antennas on the bottom to protect them. When the night was done 

me and my other loadmaster looked like a dump truck had dumped sand on us. Maintenance would do a wheel well inspection

to pick the pieces out from between the struts and hydraulic lines. Was a mess but really fun!

 

Cheers...Ron