Finished nav lights, Fuel tank SB, wing root fairings
I started off my weekend with finishing up the nav/strobe light assemblies for the wing tips. That completes the wing tips (attach nutplates, COM, NAV, MRKR antennas installed, tip ribs installed, nav lenses, nav/strobe light assemblies).
Next up is to complete the fuel tank service bulletin to safety wire the nut holding on the fuel pickup tube inside the tank. Yep, this involves opening up the fuel tank. We shuffled things around a bit and set one wing flat on a work bench. The garage gets very tight at this point. The best part is that I have full time help to move stuff, such as wings, around as needed. With the first wing up on the bench, I began the adventure of removing the end access plate that I had prosealed (no cork gasket) on a long time ago. I have a renewed appreciation for proseal and those people that are doing this process with the wings and tank attached to an airplane (restricted access).
Obviously I did get the plate off. So what is the trick? I think applying heat with a heat gun is key. I fought with it for a few minutes trying to pry it off starting with a putty knife. I broke the corner of my putty knife. After dressing my tool back into shape, I tried heating up the access plate with the heat gun. Only then was I able to get the putty knife in there. I kept working the putty knife with the heat gun until I could get my phoenilic scrapers in place. It took about 20 minutes to get the access plate off. Proseal sticks good.
Another thing I’m doing while I have things apart is to remove the fuel return plumbing that I installed back when I was expecting to get an Eggenfellner Subaru engine. This is for a fewer parts count in the tank, one less fitting to leak, and bad mojo extraction. I prosealed and riveted a small cover plate over where the fuel return fitting was.
I used the phoenilic scrapers and a proseal cutter to remove most of the old proseal and followed up with some MEK. I drilled the safety wire hole in the nut with a drill jig and safetied the pickup tube for the SB. That was all of five minutes. For reassembly, I just snatched a syringe of proseal out of the freezer :). Really, I have come to love proseal ready to go in the freezer. A few days ago, I mixed up a batch of proseal for a bunch of random tasks that I wanted to take care of (bead around gear leg fuselage exit, same for the fuel vent exits, install of the AOA ports, secure the OAT probe in wing, etc). I had plenty left over, and since I always dispense with a syringe, it is very easy to put the syringe with leftovers straight into a ziploc bag and into the freezer for next time.
With the fuel tank closed back up, I thought why not do the wing/fuselage intersection fairing while I have the wing sitting here. This was a little bit of a detour from the original plan of knocking out both tanks in the same day but I think was well worth it. One less thing to do in the hot hangar. The fairing is a prepunched aluminum strip. The holes are prepunched to match holes in the wing. This is all well and good until you get around to trying to get those holes to match the “other” side. A bunch of drilling and nutplate installation.
One wing down, one more to go and they’ll be ready to go to the hangar.
