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Date:  3-19-2013
Number of Hours:  3.50
Manual Reference:  
Brief Description:  Leak Tested Tanks

I know that with the stellar week I have had working on the plane that you are thinking, "There's no way his tanks leak!" You would be wrong. The good news is the left tank only has a small pinhole and my wife can use the right tank as an industrial sized collander. I grabbed a scrap piece of 1/4" aluminum tubing and flared it. Using EZ Turn (fuel lube) and an AN fitting, I attached it to the vent line of the right tank and sealed a balloon to the other end. The balloon again deflated rather quickly. I rounded up a spray bottle and filled it with soapy water and relocated the tank to the driveway. Aye carumba. It seemed like there were leaks everywhere along the rear baffle. Discouraged, I tried the left tank (the one I thought might leak because I forgot to glob proseal in the corners of the baffle). I moved the fittings and cap to left tank and inflated the balloon. It very slowly deflated. I sprayed the tank down and found one small pinhole near the tank attachment plate. The rear baffle was fine. I hosed both tanks down with clean water and used a leaf blower to dry them. I mixed up some proseal (hope this works-I'm running out) and smeared it around the attach plate, coating the pinhole and the surrounding area. I moved the tank inside the house to cure for a few days and turned my attention to the right tank. I drilled out a few rivets along the top of the rear baffle, enlarged the holes to #30 and "wet set" new "oops" rivets (I had originally forgotten to install the rivets in this one area wet). I hope this works. If not, I will be cutting a hole in the rear baffle and adding more proseal to the joint. I really wish I had ignored the instructions to only run a 3/16" bead forward of the rivet holes at that joint. A little more proseal would have been a good thing.
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