I had a rivet start seeping several years back. Right wing top, a little back from the lading edge. I very carefully drilled the rivet head. popped it out with a dental pick. I then again very carefully pushed the shop end into proseal bead on the inside of the tank, capturing it. I then cleaned the resulting hole with solvent using a cotton swap. I then cleaned a pop rivet with solvent and coated the rivet and the hole with fresh proseal, inserted the rivet and squeeze slowly. I then filled the resulting hole with proseal wiping off the excess. Yes I have a pop rivet showing in my right tank, but I do not have a seep and the smell of gas in my hangar. Dan from Reno
Just to add to the data on this technique, I developed a weeping rivet near the leading edge of one of my tanks that was very successfully dealt with using the syringe technique.
This happened after flying my 900h, 13y old RV8 through some pretty heavy rain. Some paint must have peeled back from the top of a rivet, exposing a leak which made itself apparent the next time I went flying (big blue halo around it etc). While bracing for having to remove the tank and cut a hole to fix from the inside I decided to try this technique as there appears to be no downside.
I did not thin the proseal at all, but I did use a 5cc syringe instead of a 10cc syringe (you can exert more pressure at the tip as the plunger is about half the surface area of a 10cc syringe).
Its been 6 weeks and another 20h of flying (at least) and the repair has held up nicely.
Fixing a leaking rivet on fuel tank.
Linear Mode
