Well, some good news/bad news on the last week's activities. The good news is, there has been quite a bit of activity between Dad and I. Its been fun working with Dad. The bad news is we've had a few rather frustrating setbacks with the fuel tanks. I had three...yeah three, fuel tanks leak during the pressure test!! What the...!!!??
The left main tank leaked right down the center of the BNC connector...I didnt read about this particular problem on VAF until after I did this tank. To other builders, this is certainly a potential 'gotcha'...make sure you really goop up the wire if you are using the capacitance sender system. It will leak out the center if you dont! So I commenced to removing the access plate and attempting to fix this (results forthcoming). Good news is it wasnt too difficult to remove even though it was ProSealed in place vs. the cork gasket.
Both ER tanks leaked at the nose in almost identical locations. I am still scratching my head over how this could be?? I not only did the same procedure as the main tanks, which had no problems in this area, but I was even more dilligent with the ER tanks. I cant for the life of me understand how they both leaked?
I have two theories however. One, we are using the cutoff finger of a glove as our makeshift 'balloon'. It certainly takes more pressure to inflate one of those than a regular balloon. For the next round of tests, I will purchase some actual balloons. Two, I have a suspicion that the ProSeal hadnt fully set up yet when we attempted the leak test. The reason I say this is, the second ER tank initially held pressure and then all of a sudden I heard a faint, but audible, pop like a balloon popping, followed by the gut wrenching, hisssing sound of leaking air.
So, we set about doing some more ProSeal work this weekend and plan to let that set up good and long this time before we try again later this week. The problem is, the leading edge ER tanks are the first sequence in riveting the wings so that is holding up progress. There isnt much left to do until we can get past that.
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