Does your canopy stick a bit (or a lot) on opening or closing? Sometimes in cold weather it takes 2 hands to do the job? If you answered yes to either of these, then your canopy rails and tracks need some love.

Many folks spray these tracks with WD40 and they work great for a week or so, then out comes the can and another application. Lubing them this way draw dirt to the tracks and it builds up. In some areas it can bind grit and start to grind down the rails (which are hard to come by right now).

Properly maintained canopy rails and tracks need just one drop of silicon about two times a year. The system is designed to work dry or with very little lube.

Here are a set of sticking rails as they came out of the plane. Yuck! You can barely see the canopy stop track button and spring in all that grime. See what new ones look like? Here are what the rails should look like.

Clean the tracks themselves with q-tips and alcohol. Use plenty until they run clean. It normally takes about 25 or thirty q-tips to do the job on both side. Sometimes a toothbrush will help. DO NOT use a screwdriver or anything that will gorge the Teflon tracks, unless you want to replace them.

Now put it all back together and you will notice a big difference. Those new buttons and springs will give you a thumping sound you can hear on the ground, but in flight they let you ‘feel’ when you have opened the canopy to limits.

If you want to order some from our suppliers, the canopy track buttons are part number: 5102275-1, and the springs are 3502-14-47.