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I continued today on the tanks after riveting the stiffeners in both tanks yesterday. The first thing I did today was put in the tank drain on both tanks. This was pretty easy as it's a small part and you can reach all the rivets with a squeezer. Actually the squeezer slipped off one of the rivets a little bit because with the sealant all over them they are very slick. It caused one of them to be tipped over some but I'm not going to drill it out because I think I could do more damage than improvement. It looks fine from the outside and it's not a structural part so I'm not concerned.  On the inside I was careful to leave a path to the drain between the Proseal covering the shop heads of the rivets so that water has an unobstructed path to the drain.  Then I moved on to the fuel cap flange. This was also pretty easy as I back riveted it into position.  I went a little overboard on sealing the shop heads here because I had a little Proseal left over from the batch and rather than just throw it out, I figured it wouldn't hurt anything to just slather it on. The other tank looks normal with the heads individually covered.  After dinner, I went back to the garage and fay sealed the interior ribs on the right tank. In this method, you cover the flanges of the ribs with Proseal and then cleco them to the skin with a cleco in every hole. Then you wait a day and come back and set the rivets. It's supposed to be much cleaner and easier! Here are the ribs and skin all cleaned up and ready to be buttered with sealant.  Here they are all sealed and clecoed into place. I mixed the sealant just on a sheet of paper and then went from the paper to the ribs with a popsicle stick. It was easy and efficient and clean! There is a pretty steep learning curve to this Proseal stuff but fight it once or twice and it becomes manageable.  Notice the slight oozing from under the edges of the ribs, this is exactly what I wanted! Overall a good a productive night on the project. This Proseal is not so bad and I'm actually looking forward to setting about 170ish rivets tomorrow and then fay sealing the interior ribs of the left tank!  
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| Thanks for visiting! | Last Update: 25 May 2012 |