Struts

The weather person promised sunny and warm today and they delivered. I started this morning by flushing the struts with mineral spirits , mainly just to see what came out. I had borescoped these struts and what I could see looked really good. I put a quart of mineral spirits in and it came out just as clean. I let these drain completely during lunch, then I put in a mixture of 60% paralketone and 40% mineral spirits. I put in 24 oz and got out almost 23 oz . I let these drain for a couple hours then removed the plastic covering from the powder coater and installed the new stainless strut forks. After dinner I took them out to the airport and stored them for assembly.
Here they are draining before lunch, real shade tree aircraft maintenance.

Here are the new Univair forks installed with those expensive special Piper strut bolts installed.

Here they are draining. I like to get as much out as possible, a thin coating is all you need.

After dinner I took the struts to the airport and worked on the wing fairings a little. I will probably make new pieces that go around the windshield, these fit OK but are mismatched and have a bunch of extra holes. It won't be much work and will look much better. Here's a couple shots with the skylight installed.

As you can see some of the attach holes are right on the edge of the material. That was about it for today.
Here is a shot of BC for his mom. He just loves this Aeronca Champ seat, just the right size for a cat.