Saturday, October 20, 2018

Fuel Tank, Part 2 (3)

3 hours

Confident that the tank now fits in the fuselage, I took it outside and rinsed it with the garden several times to flush out the debris from drilling the three holes, and whatever else was in there.  I then installed the three "oops" fittings according to the instruction sheet on Sonex's website.  Their method worked well and I didn't have any problems.




Next I figured I should leak test the tank before I put it back in the plane for good.  I plugged two of the fittings with plugs from the hardware store, and hose-clamped a piece of tubing on the third fitting.  I rubber banded a nitrile glove over the filler opening, and blew into the hose to inflate the glove.  Then I just folded the hose over and clamped a Vice-grip on it to seal the tank.  I measured the circumference of the inflated glove and wrote it down, and let it sit overnight to see if the glove deflated.




In the meantime, I glued some felt onto the tank straps.


The next morning, I measured my glove balloon again and it was the same size as when it started, so I called my leak test a success.

I put the tank back in the plane, marked where the vent port hit the glare shield, and removed the tank.  I clamped a piece of scrap wood under the glare shield and used a 1-1/4" hole saw to cut a hole for the vent port.  Then I joined the hole to the filler cap cutout with the nibbler and some files.



Next it was time to mess with my glare shield stiffener some more.  With the tank straps fully tightened it still touched the top of the tank just a bit, which I wasn't comfortable with, so I did several test fits removing some material each time.  I ended up with the center about 3/8" tall, tapered down to pretty much nothing at the ends.  This fits pretty well and although it isn't totally rigid it definitely improves the shape of the glare shield overall.



With that figured out, I tightened the tank straps for the final time, riveted the stiffener and tank stop angle, and called it done!



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