Brief Description: Fit left wing fuel tank and prepped senders
After putting the cork strips on my fuel tank, I discovered that it extended above the edge of the nose ribs. This would potentially have caused the skin to distort around the ends of the tank. I called Roger at ZAC and he suggested that I use felt instead of cork. I checked Tony Bingelis' book on "Firewall Forward" and he also acknowledged that felt is commonly used. Last night I spent almost two hours removing the cork and cleaning off the adhesive. The only cork I left was on the ends, where the tank comes in contact with nose ribs 3 and 4. This morning I cut two large pieces of felt to wrap both tanks and tested the fit. Much better all the way around. I took the tank out, cinched down the leading edge and drilled out the holes on my new additional nose rib. Once I opened up the skin again, I replaced the tank and made a plexiglass template of the fuel cap location. By then placing that on the same location on the nose skin (relative to the rivet holes), I was able to duplicate the center of the fuel cap. Next I used the fly cutter to cut a 70mm hole. When I replaced the tank and tightened the straps to replace my clecoes, the tank lined up perfectly. The last step for today was to bend the arms on my two fuel senders for mounting in the ends of the tank. Since everything else on the left wing can now be done with the skin completely off the top, I switched locations for my wings, bringing my right wing to the worktable and moving the left wing to the sawhorses.
