OK, so I was out of town for a 3-day weekend, and upon my return got some more stuff done in regards to the canopy latch assembly.

Here is the canopy latch handle that I machined all cleaned up, as best possible, with a few minor nicks & scratches in the aluminum still showing.

Another shot of the cleaned up canopy latch handle.  These shots were taken just immediately PRIOR to me drilling the small hole all the way through the handle in the lower left corner (as situated in pic below) for the forward push-pull rod securing roll pin.

I then had a series of near-laughable (if not all-out angering!) events happen that knocked me off my plan and down a diversionary rabbit-hole for a good couple of days.

I had redesigned and modified the “GIB master lights switch” box —the switch allowing me as the PIC to control the power to all the lights in the back seat (say someone leaves a light on unintentionally or falls asleep with lights on)— to be much narrower in height to provide clearance for the canopy latch rod.  I even painted up TWO subsequent new versions of this box.

The issue started in that I had to shorten the wire leads exiting out the sidewall near the underside of the left longeron.  My wire stripper —unbeknownst to me— grabbed one of the other exiting wires as I was stripping a different wire.  The stripping action worked fine on the subject wire, but cut the other wire to a nub just exiting the sidewall.

After trying in vain to get the 4th cut wire out, I simply remade the switch box with a single switch since I still had 3 wires remaining.  [Note canopy latch assembled and new setup appears to work near flawlessly… one good thing out of the last few days!]

I should have left well enough alone since I did not remember how I ran the wires through the sidewall, but at one point I wrapped the remaining 3 wires around a pair of needle nose pliers and tried to gently pull them to coax the 4th wire to exit out the sidewall hole along with the other 3 wires… well, there must be a 90° turn inside the wall because with some slow but firm tugging, all 3 wires snapped off at the exit hole.

In the ensuing day and a half attempt to find the wires and extract them, pull the remaining wires out to try to install a single pair, all while remaking yet another wire box with a bigger flange to hide the extra excavation holes I made in the sidewall, I finally gave up and simply ran the wires down the sidewall under the longeron, using alternating dabs of hot glue and silicone RTV to secure it.  At this point I was simply using the wire box to hide the holes in the sidewall!

As happens all too often, what should have been a fairly simple task turned into a giant cluster event and took up way too much time in dealing with it.

I also spent way too much time in between paint drying cycles in editing this video I did for making the new canopy latch center block.  Here it is… yes, another machining video!

Pressing forward….