So nothing really worth sharing photos of today, but I got to working on some of the punch-list items prior to installing the gear. First up was actually pulling out the gear mount hardware – I knew that some of these pieces that are bare metal had a bit of rust, which I wanted to remove. So I spent a bunch of time with a wire wheel going over everything and getting the scale off. There were a couple spots on the wear plates that required more attention than that – I seem to recall knocking some mud dauber nests off of these a while back, and it seems that the residual mud from that caused a bit more corrosion. In those spots, I ended up needing emery cloth and a hardwood block to get things smoothed out.
Next up, I went back to looking at various lines. After taking a second look at the gear-tower brake lines, I was able to get them out using the wrenches I had on hand, though the stubby set I ordered will still come in handy for reinstalling. I also did some research on routing the connecting lines between the bottoms of the gear towers and the top of the gear legs – I was thinking I might need to modify the gear-tower lines to exit the floor in a different spot, but it looks like that won’t be necessary. That’s a nice touch and will save me some work.
After that, it was down to the fun of starting to clear out mud dauber nests from these lines and fittings. So far I’ve had good success by breaking up as much as I can manually, then soaking the affected area in a bucket of water to soften the remains, and finally blowing things out with compressed air. That at least gets rid of the blockage, but still isn’t going to do the cleaning job I want – so I ordered some brushes from Amazon today, which I’ll be pulling through affected tubes (sort of like cleaning a rifle) in order to remove any residue.
One final bit – I also cracked open the gear leg crate and pulled the legs out. I taped off the brake line passages a while back, but thought I remembered one or two of those bits of tape falling off and the mud daubers getting in – and sure enough, it looks like there’s some residue. So the legs are going to have to get the same cleaning routine that I’ve been giving everything else. And I’ll be a lot more careful to cap off any open lines in the future…