Man, today was a day that was an uphill climb. Right off the bat, when I removed the air valve used to leak test the tank the Loctite 515 made it stiff. Removed, I used acetone to try to cleaning the bung fitting. Then I screwed in (temporarily) the new AD4 fitting – mistake. This messed up the threads. Ugh, put that aside and went about re-installing the left fuel tank. That actually went smoothly.
I bolted on the ER tank fuel pump for the right tank and then began working on the final bracket for that wing’s ER tank. Part way through I jumped over to the doubler I started yesterday for the power lug pass through. While drilling the stainless firewall I did something really dumb and tried to brush away a bur of material and gave my thumb a nice slice. So stupid of me. I bounced back and forth between the firewall and the ER tank bracket (the ER bracket fought me all day). In the end I was able to get the starter contact and power lug pass through both installed. Closing out the day on the ER tank bracket was not without one more mishap, while sanding the bracket I snagged the edge of the vertical belt sander and damaged the belt. Ugh. All on me, I wasn’t using it properly.
The last ER tank bracket is primed and tomorrow I will rivet it all together and finally get it installed. I would do the ER tanks again, but fuck are they a lot of work.
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