I went ahead and verified that the right tank is 100% good. It held air for 24 hours so that tank is solid and sealed. I went ahead and had my wonderful wife help me reinstall a few bolts. I’ll get the rest of them tomorrow as I get time during the work day.
I tested the left tank and I don’t see any bubbles in the areas that had leaks previously so it is looking promising. I am going to leave it overnight and hopefully tomorrow morning the balloon is roughly the same size. It will shrink as the temperatures get colder but it should stay pretty much the same size. I’ll recheck it tomorrow night around 9PM and if it is still roughly 9 3/4″ in length, we will be golden!
I tested the tank this afternoon and one of the leaks is fixed and the second one is much better but still there. I don’t know what to do at this point as I thoroughly sealed that rear side of the baffle and even shoved sealant around the rib that was close to it. I went ahead and put some sealant on the outside and I’m going to have to research and see what my tech advisor says. I am re-testing the left wing tank which was good the last time I tested it just because I’m paranoid now. So far over the past few hours it has held pressure in that balloon so that is promising.
I got the frame or skeleton of the right flap completed tonight. Tomorrow I’ll start getting the skin put on it. I hope I have enough tank sealant left to do the trailing edge as it is asking for tank sealant. I might call Van’s to see if that 3M adhesive tank that they said we could use now is good for this or not.
I got all of the parts primed today and I assembled the nose ribs. I realized one of the ribs I drilled the nut plates holes when I didn’t need it. Not a huge deal but I just assumed since I was drilling the bolt holes I needed the nut plate holes. But the bolt only needs one nut plate to secure to LOL. At least I can fix that mistake on the left one since I have to redo those parts when they come in.
Now I’ve not pressure tested it (boy I hope I got it all…) but I’ve sealed up the tank again, sanded the outside of the tank and primed it. Took a bit today but I got it all done. I really really hope it is sealed now. I put quite a bit of sealant along the rear baffle in those two sections of the tank so I believe I got it.
Aside from the tank work today, I spent a little bit of time getting everything cleaned and ready for primer. Not much else to say here as most of the work was done on the tanks today.
I decided to go ahead and prime the outside of the tanks just to make sure to keep the oxidation to a minimum on the plane but it looks like it beat me to it. I’m going to guess something in that soapy water mixture was corrosive to the aluminum as I noticed that both of the tanks had these spots over them where I had sprayed the soapy water.
I tried using acetone and NAPHTA on it but neither of them really helped with removing them. I was really hoping it was just residue of the soap dried on. So I’m going to have to see how to buff this off before I paint the outside of the tanks. I might just use the scotch brite pad to scuff the surface since I will be putting the primer on which is what they will be doing to the outside of the plane when I do the paint job down the road. Either way it all looks very superficial so I’m going to see how to buff it off and then prime.
But most of my time today was just removing the tank from the wing I installed it on. I also need to file down the outside edge of the skins just a slight amount as when I had it installed on the wing it overlapped just a tiny bit in certain areas. So I removed all of the bolts around the edge and on the rear Z brackets and put it back in its cradle. I might do one more test on this tank just to make sure it is sealed since I didn’t have good success with the second one.
Speaking of which, I cut open the two bays I had leaks in, cleaned it up and then inspected to see what went wrong. The cutting tool actually came in really handy! We had an EAA meeting that talked about it and demonstrated it so I decided to buy one since they were fairly inexpensive. It can be used free hand, with a stylus that allows you to follow a straight edge or that same stylus can be used to put inside of a hole drilled in the middle to allow for circular cuts.
Either way, in the third bay I can see where it might have an issue with the bead of sealant looking a little bubbled and messed up.
But the second one looked perfect! I have no idea where the leak is coming from here. I’ll just have to add more sealant over this section and since I’m in here I’m going to do it all across the rear baffle just so I don’t have to reopen this area again.
All in all, I’ll get started first thing tomorrow with putting the rear panel on temporarily to drill the rivet holes and then get the sealant put on and riveting the rear panels. Then I will scuff up the outside of the tanks (at least the non-exterior skin portions) and get them cleaned and prepped for priming. Then I will prime all of the parts for the left flap as well as the tanks at the same time. And if I have enough time left in the day I want to start assembling the flap. The garage is a mess right now with so many parts laying all over the place in various stages of build LOL.
I completely forgot to do the edge bending so that it doesn’t pillow out on the trailing edge as well as on the skin overlaps. I took the edging tool and ran it between each of the dimples. It seemed to work as I had previously done it for the ailerons and other surfaces like that so hopefully that doesn’t pillow out when I rivet it together. I hope to get some time tomorrow to prime the parts but I have the dentist and also the change for work tonight didn’t go as planned so we might be pulling extra time tomorrow to get things squared away.
I got everything for the left flap done and ready for priming. I’ll try to get some time to do it tomorrow but I have both church and a work thing happening so I might not get much opportunity.
It was tedious work but I got everything deburred for the left flap as well as countersunk. I got all of the ribs dimpled so tomorrow I will just need to complete the dimpling on the spar and the skins and then I’ll be ready to clean and prime the parts and start assembly.
Luckily while I was out almost all of the parts showed up while we were gone. Surprisingly, my seat kit arrived while we were gone. I didn’t even know that was going to be coming, but it was a welcome surprise. It is missing one set of seat foam but the rest is there. I called Van’s to report it missing and they asked me to submit an email to get the replacement process started. That has been sent and hopefully I’ll get a response sometime soon. I did not get the rib and reinforcement plate though for the right flap so I just continued forward with the left flap for now. I got the new rib installed and drilled and then disassembled everything and started deburring parts. I’m a little over halfway done with that and then I can start dimpling and countersinking. I hope to get some of that finished tomorrow morning before Brendon and I head out to Tulsa to watch the DCI summer tour there.
