This afternoon I finished assembling the cargo door latch that I started yesterday. I also made a little aluminum plate that will cover the center of the mechanism, hopefully reducing the odds of getting a finger caught in there on a cold and windy night somewhere. Then I drilled the holes in the front cargo door to final size and deburred the holes in the frame.
I have noticed that when I had #40 holes in these parts, there were a few little bits of steel chips that I could hear
rattling around in the tubes. When I enlarged them to #30, the holes became big enough to evacuate those little chips by shaking the frame around with the holes pointed down.
Next I reassembled the main landing gear shock struts. I had taken them apart to paint the strut tubes, and to inspect Richard’s work. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to replace the automatic transmission fluid while I was at it, since the old fluid had been in there for a few years now. Isn’t it amazing how this 2-year project is going on 4? And to think, that’s after Richard had been working on it for a few years. I can completely understand why he decided to not continue with construction. One has to really enjoy this process in order for it to be worthwhile.
I set out all of the parts to reassemble the landing gear, in part to make sure that I had all of the right pieces, and in part just because it was fun.
Also, the axles had picked up a little bit of surface rust after being exposed for a while, so I polished them with a green Scotchbrite wheel in the die grinder.