April 11th, 14th, 18th, 20th, 21th, 22nd, 27th and 28th, May 2nd 47h
Riveting the fuel tank ended up taking a lot of time. The procedure of the riveting is very similar to the one of the stiffeners.
On April 11th, I riveted the fuel drain and caps with back riveting, for both tanks.This took about 6h.
On April 14th, we did two ribs. This took about 4h.
On April 18th, we did one rib. This took about 2h.
On April 20th, we did two ribs. This completed the left tank inner ribs. This took about 3h.
On April 21th, we did five ribs. All of the right tank inner ribs at once. We definitely improved and speeded up our process. We learned that it is more efficient to do multiple ribs in the same time, so we tackled 2 together, then we tackled 3 ribs at a time. This took about 6h.
On April 22nd, I prepared the 2 outboard rib. I had to custom cut a 6D rivet to fill the holes in the rib, then rivet it with sealant. Then, I prepared the reinforcement plates, drilled then and riveted then with the sealant to the outboard ribs for both tanks. Then, I roughed all the surfaces for all inboard and outboard ribs and the rest of the parts that mount to the inboard ribs. This took about 5h.
Then, I did couple little side tasks, which took about 3h.:
- Testing the fitting of the 2 tanks with the baffle and the z bars, now that the ribs are riveted.
- Priming the z bars, so that they are ready to rivet to the tank once the fuel tank is complete.
On April 27th, I riveted the outboard and inboard rib for one of the tanks. The riveting was easier since it can be done with the pneumatic squeezer, so it can be done with all one person. This took about 6h.
On April 28th, we riveted the outboard and inboard rib for the other tanks. Then we riveted the horn and reinforcement plate for both inboard ribs. This took about 3h.
Then we moved on to the vent line, fuel pick up tube and fuel sander. We started preparing the vent line, but then we realized that we need to flare the pipe, and I did not have a flaring device. So, we decided to move on until I get one. Then we look at the fuel pick up tube, we went though the instruction of creating the custom one, but then I decided that getting an upgrade from Vans with the mesh is a better option, so we decided to move until I purchase that one. Then we move on to the fuel sander, for which we riveted with sealant the plate nuts, for both tanks. This took about 3h.
On May 2nd, I took on the task of examining the flushness of the rivets and cleaning all the outside fuel tank sealant around the rivets. The left tank, which was the first one we did had way more tank sealant around the rivets and it took about three hours to clean. The right had way less fuel tank sealant and took only about an hour to clean. Then I went through both tanks marking any rivets that were not smoothly flush with the surfaces and sanded those rivets to get a nice flush finish. A couple of rivets were a little too high for sanding according to the MIL specs, so I removed those rivets in order to reset them. Afterwards, I added protective tape to keep the metal protected against corrosion until it gets painted. This took about 6.5h
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