I spent most of the day at the hangar today, and made good progress on the annual inspection. I found a few little things that needed sorting out, but no major issues so far.

The biggest thing I found was some blue stain on top of the gascolator around a plugged off hole. There was obviously a bit of fuel leaking there. The problematic plug was made from aluminum, as is the gascolator, so I didn't want to torque it too tight for fear of galling. I purchased a brass plug in the aviation aisle at Canadian Tire, put some Fuel Lube on it, and torqued that guy real tight. I'll pull the wing root fairing off after a few flights to confirm the leak is no more.

Another thing I found was a bit of rubbing of the aluminum brake lines against the top edge of the landing gear leg fairings. I repositioned the two lines a bit to hopefully address that, but I'll take another look at this in a few flights too to make sure the fix is doing the job.

I also noted some minor rub marks on the front seat belts where they are touching the front seat back. I'm not sure yet how to best sort this one out, but I can't leave it alone as the seat belt would eventually be damaged, and these things aren't cheap.

The bottoms of both wheel pants are scraped up a bit, the left one, seen here is much worse than the right. This is almost certainly from when I taxied from the taxiway to the grass at Muskoka early this summer. I should have stopped on the pavement and checked the surface out rather than just pressing on. Lesson learned. The damage is only cosmetic, and won't be noticed when the wheel pants are on the aircraft, so I'm going to leave it alone for now.

Ron T., who owns the hangar my aircraft is in, helped me re-torque the main landing gear bolts. Thanks Ron. This job went much better than last year, as I am starting to get the hang of it. It went so well I didn't teach Ron any new words. When I built the aircraft, I put the big bolts on the outboard end of the gear legs in with the bolt heads up, so the nuts can be torqued from below. The plans show these bolts in with the nuts on top, but it is pretty much impossible to get a torque wrench on the nuts, thus you must put the torque wrench on the bolt head. This makes it impossible to get a reliable torque value due the friction of turning the bolt through the thick U-clamps. This year I discovered that I can get a 1/4" drive socket and ratchet on those bolt heads, which is much, much easier than the universal joint and long extension I used last year. Three of the big bolts at the outboard edge of the landing gear legs were very slightly under torque, so this job does need to be done annually as Van calls for.