Got 4 great flights on her including the maiden, but a little issue on the fourth landing. Put a little side load on the right side gear and the steel portion of the strut took a bend. Good news is, the Electrons held up like they should, (solid as a rock). If you've looked at the pin that retains the strut, you'll see it's a hardened roll pin into a blind hole and is obviously not normally a user serviceable part.
I used two different methods to get right and left side pins out. Because I didn't know the length of the roll pin, I used an 1/8" carbide end mill on the first and got it out, but broke 2 end mills doing it. The second one went much better, but you have to measure and approximate the location of the hole from the opposite side, then you can drive the roll pin back out, opposite the direction it was installed. I used an 1/8" end mill on this as well, because you are starting the hole on a radiused surface.
Since it took over a month to hear back from TopRc on the bent retract sideplates, I decided to order some 9/16" chromoly tubing and will have to ream it out and turn it down slightly to size. The stock struts only have a .029" or .73 mm wall thickness. The new ones should be about .060" or 1.52 mm. I will probably have to use different springs as well. If I had to do it all over, I would order Sierra gear from the get go. Definitely a learning experience, but I like flying my planes more than fixing them...
Bent strut
Milled out roll pin
Milled hole and drove out roll pin