Just days before my first conditional inspection was due, I noticed my nose strut was lowered with only about inch to 1.5 inches before bottoming out.    I dont have any experience with struts and assumed some slow leakage must have occurred over the year and I reinflated the strut during the conditional inspection.   Over the next 24 hours the strut lowered again.  I pressurized again thinking maybe I got a piece of trash in the shrader valve and it was leaking.  Once again it deflated slowly.   I checked for external leaks with soapy water on the shrader valve and all the fittings and have found none.   

For background, in the final stages of construction I took my old kits strut and sent to Lancair and had them overhaul it and install the new centering device.   That was 6-9 months before first flight.   In the first year I put 210 hours on the bird with approximately 200 landings.  I fortunately had no hard landings during that time period.  

So I have some sort of failing strut in what I consider a relatively short period of time.  Is this normal?   Does anyone have a troubleshooting manual or ideas?  All I can come up with is that perhaps the top o-ring is leaking nitrogen into the oil side.   The only evidence I can think of for that is that when charged with 300psi, the strut extends to 2 5/8 inch exposed shaft.  I seem to recall that I had 3 inches when I pressurized it during install.   Perhaps further evidence or at least confusion on my part is that after inflation I get a small amount of some sort of oil out the shrader valve as I remove the nitrogen connection.  I would not think that oil should be up there.  Any help would be appreciated.