Using some 1/8″ thick aluminum sheet, I fabricated the components for the aft strut mounts. The strut ball ends mount through the large holes on the top. The smaller pieces are spacers to keep the struts from hitting the canopy frame.
The aft mounts need to be mounted 6.125″ aft of the canopy rail split line. I measured and laid out a mark.
I positioned the mount and used a small vise-grip clamp to clamp it to the aft canopy rail, then drilled it to the rail. I then tried to bolt the mounts to the canopy rails while they were in place, but this proved to be too much of a pain given the limited access behind the rail. I ended up pulling the canopy rails off to bolt these in place.
I also screwed the forward ball ends into the forward mounts.
Finally, I popped the struts in place. This took a huge amount of force, but this is expected given that these need to lift a fairly heavy canopy with a pretty short lever arm. The force of this strut did slightly alter the canopy position which created a tiny gap between the forward canopy skin and the forward canopy rail. The gap is too small to do anything about though, so I’m going to leave it.
