1.5 Hours -
Its Thanksgiving Day, and I had a little time to work on the plane before we head to my parents for dinner.
I started off the morning, by retesting the right fuel tank for leaks. I really didn’t have very high hopes for the quick fix on this tank, but it was worth a shot. Unfortunately, the quick fix made the leaks even worse. Instead of leaking at the baffle/skin seam, the sealant filets just redirected the leaks so that the air now comes out of the skin/baffle rivet row.
Since the right tank still leaks, I’ll go ahead and do the major fix that is recommended by many builders. To do this, I’ll cut 3″ holes in the baffle using a hole saw. I’ll have to cut one hole in each bay of the tank, then reach in and reapply sealant to the inside of the skin baffle joint. I’ll put it on very heavy this time. Once the new sealant filet is in, I’ll cover the holes with 4″ diameter pieces of aluminum and some closed end pop-rivets (which I already ordered, since I didn’t think my first fix would work anyway).
Once I finished the leak test on the right tank, I removed the right leading edge from the wing and started to disassemble it for final prep. The only part I managed to finish was the joint strip. I had to drill the strip for nutplates, then deburr, dimple and prime the strip. Finally, I riveted the nutplates in place using some 3-3.5 “oops” rivets.
I used the actual nutplates as guides for drilling the joint strip.
Here the joint strip has been primed, and all the nutplates are attached.
I used oops rivets to rivet the nutplates to the joint strip.
