Whew, left tank done and drying or curing you may say. What a sticky couple of weeks. Unfortunately it took a little longer than I would have liked to do one tank due to work schedule and such. The right tank should go much quicker especially since I learned a few tricks and will be more comfortable with the process.
The sealant was very very smelly and extremely sticky but with proper care, most ridiculous mess can be avoided. Make sure you wipe the tails of the rivets of sealant before you buck them(this will make a nice shop head and keep the bucking bar from sliding) and put some tape over the manufacture head before bucking. The fuel flange was a total pain to buck since I couldn't reach with the squeezer yoke I have.
Once the tape was removed after about 4-5 hours I gave a very gentle wipe down with acetone to remove extra sealant from the skins surface. This worked well. The vent line went in and was pretty straight forward and was bent to the high point easily just bending around a finger since it's quite soft aluminum, you won't crease it with care. The fuel pick up anti-rotation bracket was a total asshole to rivet because it was almost impossible to get either a bucking bar or squeezer yoke in there because of the AN nut, I'll have to figure out something else for the right tank, ugh.
Pretty much anywhere I didn't want sealant or required a fine line, I taped the area with electrical tape and this worked marvelously.
As you can see I decided to run a dedicated ground wire from the float fuel sender to the main aircraft ground bar to avoid and loops or issues, it was easy enough to do with an internal tooth washer and a ring terminal, I recommend doing it as it was almost zero extra work or time. The beads of sealant for the rear baffle went down very easily and from what I could tell very smoothly. This was accomplished by putting the mixed sealant in a pastry icing bag purchased from Amazon for very cheap( I got like 50 of them for $8 or something).
Baffle went on smoothly and I believe squeezed the sealant down like it was suppose to, Atleast it looked like others I've seen and vans video so we shall see. The next session was putting the inspection access cover on with a bead of sealant that acts as the “gasket” I again used an icing bag filled with sealant which worked great. The baffle by the way was a high speed work session that was tricky to complete before the sealant started to go off, trying to put in all the rivets and rivet them with sticky everything is quite the task. The attach brackets went on without issue using a regular pop rivet puller and the little piece of angle wedge trick(see section 5).
The access cover screws were sequentially tightened until a small bead of sealant squished out from underneath and boom I was done. Oh and the basement smells like death , Que unhappy wife face :/
I'm going to owe her an all expenses trip to the Bahamas in this thing when it's done, that's for sure. Well, now onto the right tank while the left cures for about a week or so, at that point it will be time to see if all that work created a tight leak free tank… fingers crossed, we shall see…….