Proseal on all skin to rib connections?

[wirejock]

My mentor building a 3B and epoxies many parts before riveting.

[David Paule]

The BD-5 used Avex blind rivets and Pro-Seal for all joints. The factory said at the time that this added durability and fatigue resistance, but didn't provide any test data.

Although the BD-5 was an all-metal airplane, it was sufficiently different from RVs that no lessons are available here from that.

Dave

[N804RV]

The process is called "fay-sealing" and is used on big boys to help with water intrusion, particularly in wheel wells and manufactured splices, where major sections of the fuselage are joined.

For a GA airplane that gets flown at most a couple hundred hours a year, and isn't subject to years of accumulation of dirt and grime that the big boys are, I don't think its worth the added weight.

[tgmillso]

I fay sealed the entire lower half of my fuselage. It does add time, but only a miniscule amount of weight, as most of the sealant is extruded form the joint, that you then wipe off. If there were more than a couple of Oz of sealant in the seams for the entire lower half of the fuselage I would be surprised. I used Sikaflex Pro polyurethane sealant as it has a long working time (critical for large surfaces), but would probably use a modified sili polymer if I did it again as it is less toxic and still paintable (although both are better than using proseal). I did the lower half of the fuselage as this is the most susceptible part of the aircraft to corrosion due to corrosive exhaust gasses etc.
It does make it harder to set nice rivets, but when combined with a primer provides essentially the ultimate corrosion proofing.

Tom.
RV-7

[burrm]

A quick google search for ?Fay sealing? and found this article http://www.eaa1000.av.org/technicl/c...on/faysurf.htm .

Fascinating.....learn something new every day.