Sunday, June 26, 2016

Left rib #1 and tank attach angles - 6 hours

Big day today. I started the morning by installing the left rib #1. Once I had cleaned up the rib with MEK I had torqued the vent line to the rib fitting.

Next I needed to bend the opposite ends of the vent lines up to the high point of the tank. Took some  strength but I did it with use of my fingers to ensure that I didn't kink the line.

Both tanks are nearly done. All that is needed is to fit the tank attach angles. This part I am a bit worried about as in my mind it's going to be tricky.

Well straight off I can see that I will need to notch the attach angle to make room for the rivet shop heads. Little bit of grinding with the 3M wheel made short work of it.

Before I can set these in I needed some bucking partner help to arrive.

To kill some time I jumped over to the reinforcing ring on one baffle for the fuel sender. This is a bit tricky with the NAS nutplates as there is no room to get those rivets set. The squeezer was not going to work. After some head scratching I grabbed a back rivet set with a narrow collar and shaved down a side with the 3M wheel. It allowed me to make quick work of installing the nutplates by back riveting them.


  Well by the time I had that done, my friend mike arrived to lend me a hand on the attach angle installation.

He operated the gun and I operated the bucking bar. After coating all the pieces in a slathering of proseal. We set in to buck the rivets. Well...it went very well. Much better that I thought it would go.
 

Next on the agenda was to clean up the pieces so tomorrow I can install the fuel pickups.