Left tank: part 2 (Sealing back channel)

TLDR

• Installed left tank back channel

Details

Front channel leak test

One thing I did this time was that I put in some watch in the tank before riveting the back channel, to make sure the front side didn’t leak.

Tape on top of water line

I poured about 2 gallons of watch, and put a blue tap right on top to mark the water line.

Then I waited overnight to example I didn’t have any watch on the floor and the water line didn’t drop. Then I proceeded to work on the back channel.

Back channel

This was a long evening - 4 hours of prosealing and riveting on the back channel.

The process isn’t complex, I mixed proseal up, squeezed to the back channel and ribs, and then riveted them together.

There were a lot of rivets, and proseal sticks to everything and slow down the process signficantly. So the entire process took more than 4 hours to complete.

I was trying to focus and speed up in the process, so I didn’t take too many pictures.

Doubler on the back channel

Close shot

The fuel level sender floatie

Fuel level sender on the outside, using the fancy gasket

Finished work

Special notes on a few rivets

The 3.2mm rivets on the side are super difficult to get to

From this picture, there are 4 3.2mm rivets that needs to be riveted on the rib pointing upwards. the are located very close to the nutplate.

I made the wrong choice of installing the nutplate first, and just couldn’t get to the holes to rivet them. So I had to drill out the plate that has the 2 nutplates, install the 3.2 rivets, then install the nutplate back. The process wiped off a lot proseal, so I hope I didn’t create any leak in this process.