6/25/2006
HUGE day today!! Fuel tanks: Mission Complete! I started out late this morning on the fuel senders. I had some minor tweaking to do on the right one, and had to install the left one. Of note here is the fact that I installed the left sender in the rear baffle UPSIDE DOWN!! When I fitted it last night, I did so with no regard to which side of the baffle was the top. Well, some quick thinking led me to drilling new holes right in the sender plate to match the holes I had already put in the baffle. This is tricky because the holes are not symmetrical. It worked out fine, but I was stressin for a few minutes! (You can't tell, but it is upside down in that picture.)
Next was prepping and cleaning of all surfaces to be sealed, then I installed the rear baffle of the right tank, cleco'd it, installed the Z-brackets, and riveted it together.
Here's a quick note and tip: for the pop rivets to be set in the Z-brackets, the pop riveter has to be ground down to fit (this part is in the instructions). The part they don't tell you, is that if you have a cheap pop rivet tool (as I do), you need to take the guts out of it BEFORE you grind it. Some of the internal parts are plastic, and with the huge amount of heat generated from grinding, the plastic inside will melt. I ended up tearing it apart afterwards to see what I had broken because it wouldn't work. I melted ALL the plastic parts inside, so I made an emergency run to Menards for a new pop rivet tool. I tore it apart to get the parts out, and installed them in the one I had already ground down, and kept working.
One tank complete, on to the left!
...drum role please!!! Tanks complete!! I have to install the T-408 w/sender on the right tank, and T-411 on the left tank, but T-411 is not gonna be here until Wednesday this week. I'll install those at the same time to preserve my sealant cartridge. Here they are!!
My tank leak tester kit will be here Wednesday as well, so for now we'll just pretend that they are perfect, and do not leak!!
7.75 hours