More good progress this weekend. Over the course of yesterday and today, I finished redoing the tail spring and other related parts. Saturday morning was primer, Saturday afternoon was flat black, and this morning was matte clear coat. Everything turned out looking really nice and I really hope this is the end of rust issues forever. I’m giving the paint some more time to cure fully, but once that’s done I think I’m going to go for a final-assembly approach here – by which I mean greasing the mating surfaces between the spring and socket, as well as the fork swivel and wheel bearing, with everything getting torqued down.
The other thing I worked on today was some mud dauber nest eradication. I bought a small nylon brush set from Amazon with a long tail, with which I was able to thoroughly brush out the inside of lines that had been harboring nests. All in all I took care of both sets of brake lines (upper and lower) along with the fittings, plus a fuel line for good measure. I also uncovered the brake line ports in the gear legs and gave those a good interior cleaning, as well as scrubbing down the outsides of the legs. And of course, everything got capped off afterwards to prevent any further nesting activity.
Finally, I cleaned out the inside of the fuselage. There had been some tools in there, along with other random debris (wire insulation, aluminum chops, etc), and I wanted things pretty tidy before I lift the nose in order to get the gear legs attached. At this point, I think I’m ready to open up the access holes for the outboard wear plates and get both sets of wear plates bolted in. Once that’s done, I should be ready to lift the nose and bolt these things in place.