Tip up Canopy Hinge

[Girraf]

I've been having trouble getting my fwd canopy frame hinge hooks to slide into the plastic block assemblies in the fwd fuse. I rounded the front of the hooks and beveled the plastic blocks where the two come together but they still bind when trying to fully seat. The blocks are held apart by a .025" aluminum spacer. I decided to measure the canopy frame hinges and they are 0.260" thick, 10 thousandths larger than the opening in which they are supposed to seat.

Anyone else struggle with this? I'm thinking I'll try to sand some material off the plastic blocks to open the gap just a little bit more.

EDIT: I decided to start hand sanding/polishing the hinge hooks to remove a few thousandths from either side.

 

[PaulvS]

I would try making the spacer 0.260 thick, should be easy to do with a shim. Sanding the UHMW won't change the gap unless it can be reduced in thickness only in the area away from the spacer.

 

[Stevea]

Sanding down the HDPE blocks really doesn't work very well in my experience. The stuff just does not sand easily with a block by hand. And if you try belt sanding, it gets too hot and just kind of smears.

Far easier to add a 0.010"shim to the 0.250 spacer that is already there.