Flappa Fixed

Good ol' Astro over at REACT informed me that the flappa had a proper manual release mechanism, so off I went to try that out. Once found it was gold - much better than the barbaric method of prying it open. But even better, was it helped me further analyse what was going on.

It seemed that applying extra pressure against the clip (just by using my finger) made it hard to retract the clip with the manual mechanism. As such it became obvious that the real friction problem was internal to the mechanism and not the clip against the flappa - hence why grease did not help previously. So I grabbed the good ol' WD40 and went about spraying it into the mechanism - hoping that it would not introduce an electrical short and make matters worse.

Unfortunately it didn't seem to fix the issue even though I could definitely feel things moving more freely - there was just too much tension. Therefore I had to figure out how to remove the tension.

This lead me to the drastic measure of actually trying to bend the internal latch in various ways. My first two attempts failed - with the second seeming to make it worse - but my third was successful.

As a result, I can now use my new (non leaking) fuel cap and my release button. Woohoo!

But alas, it is now raining (and not really rotor weather) and the week-end has all but passed. :( This is the first week-end that the rotor stayed home. :(