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Last big ProSeal session on the tanks putting on the right rear baffle and access cover. The rear baffle is such a monster session–lots of rivets. It took about an hour to set up. Even though everything was set out and ready to go, I still had to MEK the rivets, get out the tools, and clean all of the surfaces one last time. There was about two hours of riveting with Julie helping for one hour and then an hour and a half of clean up. I took an hour longer to do this baffle than the other baffle. I guess I was just being extra careful.
I started out by thinning a little bit of ProSeal with some MEK and applying it to the troublesome leaking rivet on the left tank. I used lung power to create a small vaccuum in the tank. I could see the skin between the ribs pucker in. It looked like there was one spot that pulled in the ProSeal. Hopefully that stops the leak.
This time around, I spread a thin layer of ProSeal on the baffle flange and put a bead ON the rivet holes of the skin. I also paid close attention to the corners, making sure the ProSeal was on all 3 surfaces, and squeezed out nicely when I put the baffle in place. Looking in through the access cover, the corners looked great. Just to be sure, I stuck the gun in the corner from the outside and shot a little more in there.
In all of my careful ProSeal application, I forgot to dab ProSeal on the last few spots of the capactive sender wire. I could reach the inboard most bay through the access hole, but the next bay over isn’t secure. I decided it wasn’t a big deal and moved on.
The blind rivets were fairly uneventful, except that a few mandrels didn’t break right at the rivet head. I had to use a vise grip wrench to bend them back and forth. Otherwise, I couldn’t get the squeezer on the skin rivet next to the blind rivet. I blame the cheap rivet puller that I have.
On the skin to baffle rivets, Julie helped place rivets while I moved clecos and did the squeezing. There are a ton of rivets there, but we chugged through them. I squeezed the outboard Z bracket rivets and Julie helped rivet and buck the inboard bracket. I had just enough ProSeal left to put on the access cover with some hex cap stainless screws.
Lots of clean up ensued. The ProSeal was getting pretty set, so it took quite a while to clean up the tank.
Fingers are super crossed that the left tank is now sealed and that this tank turns out well. Even if there are some leaks, I’m happy to have these puppies done. I set the tank leading edge up to cure. This should help the ProSeal ooze down into the seam versus out of the seam.
Julie is so cool. She said the next time, we’re doing QuickBuild. First, she recognizes that I’ll probably build another plane some day, and she’s already bought into the QuickBuild. I certainly wouldn’t mind having someone else do the nasty tanks and the monotonous wings next time.