Wagabond die spring landing gear struts

[6PapaWhiskey]

For those of you building a Wagabond, I thought that I'd pass along the results of my recent installation of die spring landing gear struts. After flying my Wagabond for almost 2 years and 400 landings, I replaced the bungee struts to the die spring struts sold by WagAero (P/N M-222-100). I had the original builder weld up the ends for me. Other than that, it's a bolt-on replacement. I have found that the die spring gear is a bit softer during the initial touchdown, whereas the bungees were quite stiff. Also, less tendency to bounce on those "less than perfect" 3-pointers. The biggest surprise was a 6-7 KT increase in cruise speed. I expected a drag reduction, but not this much. An added bonus was a 15-20 degree reduction in cruise CHT's due to the extra air coming through the cowling.

Negatives? The spring struts have a bit less travel than the bungee struts and they weigh 1 lb more each. I don't consider the weight gain as significant and I don't do any back country flying.

For the builders that plan to stick with bungee struts, I have a set you can have, including 2 new 1280HD's (not installed), for shipping costs

[59pacer]

I went through the same process with our Acro Sport II many years ago, and I'm happy with the change.
The advice I got from the EAA at the time was that bungees will handle rough strips better than the springs, but that wasn't an issue. I've been into a few bumpy strips since then with no issues.
Being me, I made a few small changes to the design to increase strength and reduce later potential issues:
1. supported the welded on washers with small triangular welded in gussets
2. Welded a doubler tube inside the top end of the inner sliding tube so that the AN4(?) bolt which holds it all together was bearing on more metal than just the thin wall of the single sliding tube. I could see that hole go 'oval' fairly fast with the pounding it would get. Subsequent removal/disassembly/checking has found the wear in that area was minimal.
I hate to think how many landings are on the aircraft now, possibly a few thousand (and not many of them greasers!), and the only noticeable wear is is at the upper and lower pivots. Bushings may be necessary at some time in the future!

[tnowak]

Out of interest, has anyone installed the WagAero die spring struts on a PA17 Vagabond?
TonyN