My canopy lift springs are good, but not great. They do lift the canopy but it's slow going until you get near the top, their stop isn't at the right spot, and they don't hold the canopy open very well.

I plan to make three changes. First, I removed one of the struts to measure its force. The easiest way to do this was to use a bathroom scale - the strut "weighed in" at 35lbs. I found a pair of gas springs on eBay that were about the same length and were rated for 60lbs. Hopefully that's not too much! I may only install one.

I will also machine new stop blocks and a safety latch. The hinges already have a mounting point for the stop blocks, I just need to make them accurately and install them. For the safety latches, I'm thinking about a sleeve of some sort that fits over the gas strut and drops into position when the canopy is open, preventing it from closing again. To close the canopy, you would lift the sleeve back off the strut. I just want to make sure it's easy to do, so I need to play around with different configurations.

The new gas shocks arrived and I installed them today. The new ones are slightly shorter than the old, which may actually be a good thing because it will act as an additional stop to keep it from opening too far. But I still want to work out another stop method so the gas shock doesn't have the take the whole load in tension. I had to epoxy a fitting onto the end of each to get them to attach properly, and I don't want to strain that joint too much. One nice thing is that the new gas shocks are about half the weight of the old. I'm saving almost 250g with this (over half a pound!) I couldn't test them, though. I didn't have any JB Weld to attach the fitting, which is what I wanted to use, so I used a high-strength epoxy I had. It'll test to 2000psi, but only after a 24- hour cure, and I didn't want to mess with it prematurely. I left the canopy propped open with a board to keep it from moving accidentally until I can get back out next week.