OK first of all I would never suggest do not take any advice from those who have responded on this thread so far.
skyflier I would recommend you do not start making mods indiscriminately on your already excellent airplane. If you did every mod folks talk about you will end up with a ten pound airplane that flys like---well lets not talk about that.
If folks have experienced an arf any arf with unhardened piano wire gear then indeed that is a problem and certainly a defect. It does happen and yes I have seen it. For a period the airplanes sold as Senior Cadet but actually called Super Seniors which were Sig ripoffs and the hardware packages on these ships was unusable The airplanes were likely made in the same factory and jigs but different hardware packages as well as much cheaper indigenous woods. These airplanes averaged when assembled at least three or more pounds heavier than the Sig product.
Now yes these wires were unusable and I spent a great deal of time bending up new wires for the fellows in our club.
All of this withstanding though just because some airplanes may have come with substandard wires at some point I feel that is no reason to arbitrarily start doing all sorts of modifying for a likely non existant problem. 5/32 wire has indeed worked fine with just about every generic forty size trainer since--well since the beginnings.
Calvi the weird and admittedly silly landing gear above was done for a series of races at our club I ran a few years ago that was simply The Wingless Trainer races. No wings allowed. Those caused more laughter at our field then or since. The rules which yes I wrote required the airplane to demonstrate the ability to fly with any gear changes. That gear was three pounds heavier than the standard landing gear but it did just fine.
The anhedral, well that has nothing to do with the otherwise stock Aerostar 40 Trainer and that was the fourth anhedralled trainer I have done sine since about the mid seventies. Why? Well that is just about the best way to acheve that near neutral roll stability that will make that trainer fly like a pattern airplane. Yes it works believe it or not, but that's not the subject of this thread..