10/13/2008 Fuel Tank - 3 hours Tonight I started by spending an hour cleaning the proseal dots off all the rivet heads on the exterior of the tank. This took about an hour and a LOT of elbow grease! I was pretty tired after scrubbing hundreds of proseal dots. In the process of cleaning, I found two rivets that were very crooked. I took my pencil grinder and ground the heads flush with the outside of the skin. I will put a tad more proseal over them, then when painted you will never know.
Next I torqued the nuts that hold the fuel vent and fuel return lines to the bulkhead fittings on the inside of the tank. This was easily achieved with a crowfoot and my torque wrench. I will proseal over the nuts the next time I make a batch.
Next, I fabricated the anti-hangup bracket that goes from the stiffener to the rib. My scrap bin is getting big enough to where I dug and found a piece already cut that almost exactly matched what I was looking for.
Next, I spent some time working on getting the fuel level sensor mounted in it's new location in the second bay. It can no longer live in the first bay because of the flop tube. I decided to stay with the float-type sensor instead of the capacitive sensor. I clecoed the access plate (with the holes in it) to the tank to determine how high the sensor sits in the tank in the stock location. It turns out that the center of the 1.5" hole is centered vertically in the tank. Cool. I found the vertical center of the baffle and the horizontal center of the second bay (between the two vertical rivet lines on the baffle) and drilled a #40 hole there. Then I used Vern's fly cutter to cut my 1.5" hole. Turns out his fly cutter won't go that small, but it will do 1.675", and that still works fine, so I cut it.
Next I laid the access plate on the baffle centered over the hole. I used a square to get the flat side perpendicular to the baffle flanges, then clamped it in place. This is important so the float arm will pivot in a vertical direction. The large holes were drilled #19,
