n42bm.com

Sealing up the fuel tanks - part 1

Hours: 8 Manual Ref: Page 18-5 steps 8, 10 and 11 Partner: Bill Thomason

Well, the time has come to bite the bullet and start sealing and riveting together the fuel tanks. All-in-all, the process went far better than I was expecting, although my expectations were probably fairly negative.  Having Bill’s assistance helped tremendously, especially when placing the ribs into the skins.  Proseal, or ChemSeal in my case, is VERY sticky stuff, but it somehow seemed to make the ribs “slip” into place a lot better than when I was fitting pieces together for final drilling.

I didn’t have all the parts ready to complete the steps in plans order, but after reviewing the entire riveting process, the 3 steps we did work on looked like they could be done first.  The first parts to get done were the stiffeners, and they were back riveted.  After those were all in place, the ribs were installed.  To make things go a little quicker, we just cleco’ed the ribs in place, rather than rivet each as it was installed.  Then we added the J-channel.  The plans say to put the sealant on the skin, rather than the J-channel, but it just seemed easier to us to put it on the J-channel directly, then slide the J-channel in place.  Having done it once, successfully, I’d do it the same way again.

After Bill left, I finished riveting all the parts that were just cleco’ed on.  So far, so good.  That’s a large portion of the right fuel tank done.  Now to get the left tank up to speed :-)