Name that movie my friends! Yes, last night I was able to complete (well – almost) the left tank. After verifying all the sealant and all the ribs where sealed and ready, it was time to close up the tank by installing the rear baffle. What I thought would just take an hour or so turned out to be about 4 hours. The baffle is quite long and has a lot of rivets, all of which need to be sealed properly.
So After verifying everything, I laid down sealant on the inside of the top and bottom skin and along the rear ribs to match up with the baffle. I also generously applied sealant to the corners that have bending/forming cutouts and need extra sealant to close. I wound up dimpling the skin and the baffle, as opposed to the plans that call for countersinking. The skin is only .032″ and is marginally too thin to countersink. They recommend that approach as dimpling could make it hard to install the baffle, but I had no problem what so ever and that was with the special Avery Tank Dimple Dies that are slightly deeper than standard dimples.
The baffle was insert and I then riveted it to the top and bottom of the tank skin – all of the rivets driven wet/with sealant. Then I riveted the rear attachment “Z” bars that have nutplates to allow the rear of the tank to be secure to the main spar. There are a lot of screw attachment points to connect this to the wing. Given each side can hold 30 Gallons of fuel @ 8 Pounds per gallon, thats 240 pounds of sloshing goodness that needs to be held securely.
After all the rivets were set, it was time to individually seal the shop head and fix all the fillets that seal the baffle. It was a very time consuming process. By the time I got to cleaning up the excess sealant on the skins, it already started to harden so I had to repeatedly hit it with fresh MEK to get it to soak in and clean up, which it did after a few minutes.
Of course after sealing it I notice about 2-3 rivets that aren’t completely flush, but it’s too late to be able to fix them. At least they are on the underside of the wing. As long as the sealant is sufficient, they should still be air tight. I also got to see how the “partially filled” indicator I installed under the fuel cap area looked once the tank was sealed up. It looks exactly like what I use in the Piper Arrow and should be quite handy.
I had hoped to be able to mount the fuel sender (capacitive probes from Princeton Electronics), but it appears my vendor sent me the wrong ones. So I have to wait for that to be figured out. At least while Tricia and I are in Peru the tank will cure and I’ll be that much closer to be ready to test the tank when I return.
After the tank was finished, I just didn’t have the energy to start the other tank. So today I tackled cleaning up the remaining mess from the tank and some additional wiring chores. I installed the wiring conduit in the right wing. Ran the air tubes for the Angle of Attack (from AFS) in the right wing as well and ran wiring to the tip of the right wing for the tip lights, landing light and the position/strobe lights.
I also installed wiring in the right wing for the Auto Pilot Servo and the Airleron Trim. Both wings also got wiring to connect to the air temperature probes that will be in both wings (one for each 10″ electronic flight instrument system – EFS in the cockpit).
myrv10factory 