3.2 Hours -
Earlier in the week, I received my second quart of tank sealant from Van’s. However, I didn’t have any time to work on the plane until this weekend. With a new batch of sealant, I’ll have way more than I need to finish the tanks…at least it is relatively cheap stuff.
My new batch of sealant arrived earlier in the week...I'm gonna have a lot left over now!
I pretty much have a system down for riveting the tank ribs to the skin. It is now taking me around 40 minutes per rib with almost no bad rivets. The last two inner tank ribs were easy to rivet, and I then moved on to working on some of the finishing touches that must be completed before closing the tank.
Since I’m using the pre-fabbed fuel pick-ups from Van’s, the only thing I have to do is test fit the pick-up to make sure it sits in the correct place in the tank. Once I had it oriented correctly, I went ahead and installed the pick-up on the tank access panel using the appropriate AN hardware, anti-rotation bracket and sealant.
I had to make sure the pre-fabbed fuel pick-up fit properly before attaching it permanently.
Here, the fuel pick-up is attached and sealed.
I also put some sealant on the outside of the pick-up...why not, I have a whole lot of sealant now!
Finally, I pulled out the fuel level sending unit for the left tank and bent the float wire. This one went much more quickly than the right float. Of course, when you are using a mallet and a vise as your primary tools, it is difficult to go slow. However, I still have to test fit the sending unit to make sure the float reaches the top and bottom of the tank.
Bending the fuel float wire seemed much easier this time around.
