5/18/2008
Happy Birthday to our oldest "son" Wiley...he's 5 today!
Short day on the airplane today...I have more trim work to do for the upstairs hallway. I got the tip up struts mounted today, but almost didn't.
I started by installing the aft mounts. The left side went in just fine. The right one didn't want the screws to be put in. Well, okay, I stripped the head of one of the screws, and that would've been the end of my day (after about 15 minutes) because I have a personal rule that if I can't complete the task at hand, I quite until I can. I searched for and luckily found a replacement, so I kept going. The problem was the position of the nutplate...it was slightly off center, and the screw won't go in if that happens. For the replacement screw, I ran a tap thru the nutplate, that did the trick.
Here's the screws holding the font mount to the frame. I countersunk these rather than dimpling, and they look great.
Then the ball stud mounts were installed, and the struts snapped right in place.
The struts work flawlessly, and the movement is very smooth.
Pretty cool! Today the temperature fell back in to the 60's, actually it's right at 60 degrees as I type this, so no canopy plexi work. It did hit 80 yesterday, and I thought about starting, but the struts going in first were priority. I might hit 80 later this week, so we'll see what happens.
1.0 hour