Quick question regarding canpoy ball mount

[tx_jayhawk]

My kit came with a piece of .125" 2024 taped to the struts to make the rear end of the scanopy strut mounts. It was clearly too short to make one of the pieces (there is no waste from the pieces I've already made and dimensions are correct). Vans has supposedly never heard of this, although I do recall reading one person's website that they saw the same thing.

I found another small odd shaped piece of .125 2024, and I'm planning to use it. Is that what others have done, or have that cut a slice of 6061 bar stock to act as a spacer?

Minor issue I know, but I was hoping someone could confirm that the small piece of 2024 is fair game.

Thanks,
Scott
7A Finsihing

 

[Radomir]

Scott,

Same here... whatever they provided wasn't enough. What I did instead was to use a scrap piece of 0.250 stock from the finish kit.. so on one side, I have only one plate instead of 2x0.125.

 

[mburch]

Scott,

If you haven't mounted the struts yet, consider using the alternate strut mounting arrangement shown in "XX Years of the RVator" - the one where the strut penetrates F-721 and mounts lower down on the fuselage sidewall. That photo always looked to me like it would solve one of the things I always hated about the tip-up canopy, which is the bad strut geometry that prevents them from holding up the canopy until you get it more than halfway open.

mcb

 

[RudiGreyling]

Scott,

If you haven't mounted the struts yet, consider using the alternate strut mounting arrangement shown in "XX Years of the RVator" - the one where the strut penetrates F-721 and mounts lower down on the fuselage sidewall. That photo always looked to me like it would solve one of the things I always hated about the tip-up canopy, which is the bad strut geometry that prevents them from holding up the canopy until you get it more than halfway open.

mcb

mcb,

You have more details on this one, did a quick search on the RVator index I have in a spreadsheet and can't find it..

Regards
Rudi

 

[mburch]

You have more details on this one, did a quick search on the RVator index I have in a spreadsheet and can't find it..

Rudi,

Sorry for the late reply, I didn't see this till just now. The blurb in the RVator book is called "Tip-up Canopy Strut" and is dated 8/96. In the "21 Years Of" book it's on page 117. Not sure where it is inthe "24 Years Of" book. Basically one end of the strut is mounted much further down on the fuselage sidewall, and the strut penetrates the forward canopy deck. I think this would make it so that the strut is always helping to lift the canopy, instead of only providing assistance when the canopy is more than halfway open. If I ever build another tip-up RV I'd probably try to experiment with this arrangement.

mcb