I realize Kerry would never approve of this post because it is a modification to the plans - but, I have an improvement over the plans wheel pants attachment. My original wheel pants attachment was done exactly as the plans called for. I’m not sure why, but my outside screw would loosen during flight. I tried Locktight - but this did not seem to help. This may be an anomoly only with tail draggers - not sure. In addition, I realize that these wheel pants were designed for a 130 mph aircraft - mine is closer to 180 mph. I was doing some practice touch & go’s at our airport when I noticed that something did not feel right with the handling of the aircraft. When I landed, my 3/16" hole was now over an inch in diameter and the fiberglass was severly damaged. I realized that I was just clamping across fiberglass - and this was clearly not sufficient. So, I decided to go with a belt & suspenders approach. I epoxied a .025" aluminum facing to the inside of the wheel pants - the end of the axle will now contact aluminum directly. I also epoxied an AN970-3 washer to the outside of the wheel pant. I counter sunk it a bit - but left it proud to the surface. Lastly, I threw away the “Washer Head Screw” and went to a drilled head AN-3 bolt. I then epoxied in a clevis pin that was drilled and safty wired the bolt to the clevis pin. I know this is probably overkill - but wanted to share my experience with anyone still in the build process. These are easy modifications to make during the build.
Bill,
Excellent and similar to what I did.
First I made these big “washers.” They are made of .125 aluminum, and have an ID that will just slip over the axle. In this picture you can see a finished one over the stub of the axle we cut off earlier. To make this part, I first holesawed an 11/16" hole in the sheet and then reamed it to .750ish. Then I used a bigger holesaw to cut out the washer.
Here they are installed. The washer was flush riveted to a larger round piece of .025. Then that assembly was riveted and bonded to the inside of the wheelpant. The end of the axle pilots inside the washer, which both provides some of the support and also makes it easy to get the 3/16" screw into the threaded hole in the axle.
Though I’ve only exceeded 180MPH once, we kept losing the #10 screws on the outside. So I did this:
Brian,
Great minds think alike 
Those both look like good options. Thanks for sharing.
On the old forum there was a lot of discussion where people had problems with the wheel pant mounting. I took advantage of the discussions and did something about it proactively.
I too had wheel pant loosening issues.
My home field is a less than smooth grass runway.
My solution, similar to the aforementioned, was to;
Repair the damaged pant outer wall.
Adhere a thick pad (from memory 4 layers) of kevlar to the inside (outer wall), covering a large area (probably 100 x 50 mm)
Attach the wheel pant using 5 Button Head Alan key socket screws (able to tighten better than the original Philips head) and a large stainless steel washers (we call them Fender washers).
Note: Take care with inside wall screw length - contacting tyre wall.
The overall intent was to strengthen the outer wall (single fix point) and spread the retaining load over a larger area.
So far - 100 hrs? - so good 
I took my wheel pants off and installed larger tires. I fought with the retention of the pants and they worked well on pavement but when flying Young Eagles off of turf the left pant failed and rotated forward as seen in this still shot from a departure video:
The landing wasn’t too exciting although I eventually needed all of the rudder to keep the plane straight on roll-out after touchdown. Here’s a photo of me and my passenger (the identity of the young lady that was my YE passenger is preserved) after landing. She was not shaken at all:
A photo of the pants and fairings after removing them. Now with the larger 5" tires it behaves much better on the turf and the speed loss is small enough that I don’t really notice it:
I have a set of Van’s wheel pants that I may install at some point but I do like the look without them. Here’s a photo (posted before) showing the larger tires in use and again I’m flying Young Eagles off of a turf runway:
Good suggestions here for mounting but for flying off rough turf fields I’d recommend to toss the pants up on the shelf and make life easier on yourself …
Dale
3.0 Corvair/Taildragger
Kerry here. 
On mine, I fiberglassed a fender washer inside the pant and on the outside I used a large beveled washer that I countersunk so the flat head screw that held the pant to the axle was flush with the washer. (I wanted to attach a photo of my installation but I only have a hard copy and it’s 1500 miles away from me at this moment.) I used locktite to secure the screw and never had a problem with it loosening.
I was not a stickler ot the plans in many areas, but I also knew when builders were solving problems that didn’t exist or going about things in an overly complex or weight-adding matter. The wheel pant and gear leg fairing installation shown on the Sonex plans is a weak spot in the design, and does lead to wallowed out of the holes in the wheel pants as well as the fuselage floor.
Cheers!
Kerry
I’ve landed at a bunch of grass strips in Wisconsin and Illinois with wheel pants. Some of them loosened the fillings in my teeth but the wheel pants are fine.
I did something a bit different that worked well. Since I was using the larger tires and the wheels were a bit further out on the axels due to having O’Keeffe hydraulic disk brakes, I slit and spread the bottom of my wheel pants and added in a filler about 3/4" wide. But also needed something to hold the outside wall further from the end of the axel. Made a spacer, stiffener, from about a 5/8" square aluminum bar, about 4" long and machined down to about 3/16" thick for all but the center section that contacted the end of the axel. Riveted that inside the wheel pant with a couple of rivets each end, and knocked to mandrel out of the center two leaving holes through which safety wire was routed. Had a friend who also landed in one of his wheel pants, so used two bolts on the inside wall of the pants, and one of those was also safety wired.
David A.
Looks great… i had one loosen once and since then i have used locite