August 21, 2005

Today, I figured it would be a good idea to make some headway on the canopy. It’s gotta be done sooner or later, so it might as well be sooner. I started by taking off the canopy and working on the tracks. They needed the rear part beveling off so the the side skirts will clear. This was pretty easy on the belt sander. Then I drilled all the holes to final size, polished the rails up, and then countersunk the holes for screws. The planes use regular dome head screws, but I wanted to neaten it up some and use flush ones. It took quite a long time to do all this. Mostly the polishing took all the time out of the day, but they do look a lot nicer now. I polished the screw heads too. Nice.

Here is the installed item.

And a close up of the inside of the track.

Today I was going to do all the final tweaking of the canopy too, so I had to do the latch. In order to complete the latch, I had to work out some bumpers for the frame to hit for canopy closing “sound quality”! My wife is an NVH (Noise Vibration Harshness) Supervisor at Ford Motor Company, so she’ll appreciate this little touch. Here’s what I used. Some small rubber plugs.

The next thing I did was to install the threaded rod to the rear canopy track. In order to keep this level, I had to install a small piece of angle down to where the rod would hit it. I forgot to take pictures of this though, so I’ll do that tomorrow. I also tweaked the rear of the canopy a little bit to raise it slightly. It was just a tad low. Now it’s almost perfect. Hopefully, spending all that time getting this right will help me out when I come to do the rear skirts.

Now all that was done, I could do the latch. Basically, it involved lots of putting it on, checking, pulling it off, filing, putting it back on, etc. etc. I swear I had it on and off about 20 times! Eventually, it was right. Not too much strain on the canopy, and a nice firm over centre. I also bent the latch arm slightly to better match the angle of the pin. This is a lousy photo.

I finished up the finish strip that runs down the spine of the canopy, so I could set the length of the latch shaft. Then, I trimmed the latch shaft down to the right length for the exterior handle. I didn’t get around to drilling the handle to the latch shaft yet though, as it was time for me to go home…. Dinner was almost ready!

I went home quite happy as I feel I’ve accomplished quite a bit on the canopy today. Hopefully over the course of this week, I’ll be able to get more of it done. The next task is going to be the rear hold down blocks. Oooo, I’m not looking forward to that!