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Received my order from Van’s containing two fuel pickups (you can make your own, but Van’s sells these pre-made ones with a nice screen as an option for $6.25 each), an assortment of “oops” rivets (I ordered .2 pounds of each size for a total of about $30–should be enough for the rest of the project), wing conduit, 3/4″ snap bushings (still not sure if I’m going to use the conduit or go with just snap bushings for the wing wiring), clear plastic tubing (for plumbing the pitot tube), and a whole bunch of ProSeal in the tubes.
I put the NAS1097AD3 rivets to use right away. A recent RVator (Van’s newsletter) mentioned that these rivets are good for attaching nut plates to items that are too thin to countersink. The rivets have a smaller head than normal, so they can’t be used in structural locations. For holding on a nut plate, they are perfect.
I countersunk the capacitive plates just a bit with the deburring tool and attached the nut plates with NAS1097AD3 rivets. Worked great.
I also cut the notch in the snap bushings for the fuel tank vent. It took me a while to figure out a good way of doing that. The bushings are tough, so filing had little effect. Drilling didn’t work. The notch is so close to the edge and the surface so slick, the bit just slipped right off the bushing, even in a drill press. I finally used the Dremel with a bit that looks like a mini reamer. Tested the fit with the tubing and a small chunk of wire.
Adele also helped me dimple all of the fuel tank ribs. I put the squeezer in a vice. She loves running the trigger on the pneumatic squeezer and I move the part around. She’s never punched an extra hole, so she’s doing much better than me, so far. I used the “3T” dimple dies from Cleaveland that make a slightly deeper dimple. That’s supposed to allow some extra room for the sealant so the skins way lay flatter.
Drilled the fuel filler flange using the skin as a guide.
I also set up the fly cutter for making the access hole in the inboard end rib of the fuel tank. I’m really tired today after my first solo cross country, so I’m going to leave the actual hole cutting for tomorrow when I can double check my measurements with a more alert mind.