Today was the big day. Installing the rear bulkhead (baffle) to the fuel tank effectively closes it out, no going back. It involves a ton of riveting and sealing so I brought Mitchel out and put a mask on him to do cleco and misc duty. Everything was all laid out ready to go this morning. All I had to do was mix sealant and rush, rush, rush. I started with 3.3 oz of sealant and that did about half of the bead required just under the rivet line. I mixed another 3.3 oz and ended up mixing a couple more oz to get everything gooped up like I wanted it. I put a 1/4 bead of sealant along the rivet lines per the plans using a medium size syringe from the pet store. We set the baffle down onto the tank, got the rivet hole alignment perfect and we started cleco'ing. Then it was time to squeeze 88 rivets and then start blind riveting the web of the baffle to the rear flange of the mating ribs. Then it was blind riveting the Z brackets on (7 brackets with 5 rivets each). I used universal rivets per the plans on the end brackets because you could get to them to squeeze. I was very happy with the squeeze out I could see from the inspection cover and the rivets set pretty good. I had one blind rivet break the mandrel off high, so I just cut it off with a dremel. Cleaned up was smooth. I didn't put any sealant on the baffle itself (per the plans) so the it was actually easier than the ribs from that perspective (less messy). Mitchel did great and was invaluable! On a side note, my buddy Mike was nice enough to come by and drop off some parts from ACSS and noticed that I had turned my outboard Z bracket around backwards (duh), at least that one will be easy to fix, the rest of them were correct - just got in a hurry! I am glad to have this behind me and once I finish fixing the bracket and installing the inspection cover I can leak check it before moving onto the right tank.
Mitchel and I putting in the cleco's. Sealant's cooking!
