May 25, 2020
Now that we have a new hole in the fuel tank for the fuel level sender we needed to install nut-plates as well. None of our squeezers fit in that small of a hole, so we ended up modifying a bucking bar to go through the hole and shot the rivets in. They’re not pretty, but they should hold. We don’t have a nut plate locating tool, so I just took an extra nut-plate, ran a bolt just a few threads deep, then cut the head of the bolt off. This allowed us to place the bolt in the drilled the holes and use the open side of the nut-plate as a drill template.
We also chose a good spot for the fuel return and committed by drilling it. We’re pretty set on a full SDS EFI setup, and that requires having a return line to the tank. To minimize splashing and foaming, we located the return just off the bottom of the tank and will angle a 90 degree bulkhead fitting so the return fuel is directed along the bottom skin. Its more than 4″ away from the pickup which is the recommended distance from SDS and in the plans. I made up a strap duplicator and used it to locate the anti-rotation bracket for the flop tube.
After all this drilling in the tank, we took it outside, flushed it 4 times with water and left it in the sun to dry. The left tank is now ready for final assembly and we can move on to the right one.
Since there are no inverted mods going into the right tank it was a lot easier. We mounted the Vans supplied pickup tube and anti-rotation bracket per the plans. The fuel level sender hole was pre-cut and the nut-plates were already installed and the wire bending for the float was a lot simpler.
The only off-script hole we needed to drill was for the return fuel fitting, which we put in the same location as the left tank. Since we didn’t want to remove this tank for flushing, all of these holes were drilled with a grease covered drill bit and a vacuum on the backside of the hole. All seemed clean when we were done so we set everything aside and to wait for the tank sealant to come in.
With time left in the day we moved on to reading through the plans to figure out the rest of the wing work that needed to be done. We put the steel brackets on the ailerons, drilled the aileron alignment stick, and started fabricating the aileron mounts for the wing. Eventually we ran out of day, but this was a productive one.
Cheers,
-Kacy
(Total Build Time: 207.5 hrs)