After spending a week in Oshkosh camping next to my unpainted -8A, I'm strongly considering building a new set of tanks. Why? I am planning to have my airplane painted by the end of this year and the tanks have bothered me since it has been flying more than two years ago.
The left tank started with 4 weeping rivets and several more are showing signs of weeping. I did make an attempt to repair with loctite a couple years ago, but I think it is beyond that. I could cut holes in each bay of the rear baffle and goop up the seams rather than building new.
As my bad luck would have it, the right tank doesn't leak, but has a different issue: in a moment of severe stupidity, I enlarged the hole for the tank cap somewhat (please don't ask why) while building and the cap doesn't look right at all sitting in an enlarged hole. This bothers me every time I look at it.
Lastly, the rivets look okay, but I could do better with the tank dimple set.
I figure that the cost of the parts, dimple dies, and proseal will run in the ballpark of $750-$800. Not cheap, but it would make me feel a lot better and might actually be "fun".
My wings were fully matched hole, which makes me think that it is feasible that I could build the tanks and the screw holes would match up perfectly. My initial plan is to build up the tanks with the Z-brackets, skin, & ribs all clecoed together. Then, assemble the new tanks using screws and back drill through the spar into the z-brackets using the inspection panels for access. For the inboard most z-bracket, the plate nuts are on the spar and would require careful location of those holes. Then I could clamp the tank attach angle to the mating part on the fuselage and match drill the tank attach angle to the rib. After this, I could rivet the tanks together using proseal.
Any issues with my plan? Any other thoughts? Have I gone crazy?
The left tank started with 4 weeping rivets and several more are showing signs of weeping. I did make an attempt to repair with loctite a couple years ago, but I think it is beyond that. I could cut holes in each bay of the rear baffle and goop up the seams rather than building new.
As my bad luck would have it, the right tank doesn't leak, but has a different issue: in a moment of severe stupidity, I enlarged the hole for the tank cap somewhat (please don't ask why) while building and the cap doesn't look right at all sitting in an enlarged hole. This bothers me every time I look at it.
Lastly, the rivets look okay, but I could do better with the tank dimple set.
I figure that the cost of the parts, dimple dies, and proseal will run in the ballpark of $750-$800. Not cheap, but it would make me feel a lot better and might actually be "fun".
My wings were fully matched hole, which makes me think that it is feasible that I could build the tanks and the screw holes would match up perfectly. My initial plan is to build up the tanks with the Z-brackets, skin, & ribs all clecoed together. Then, assemble the new tanks using screws and back drill through the spar into the z-brackets using the inspection panels for access. For the inboard most z-bracket, the plate nuts are on the spar and would require careful location of those holes. Then I could clamp the tank attach angle to the mating part on the fuselage and match drill the tank attach angle to the rib. After this, I could rivet the tanks together using proseal.
Any issues with my plan? Any other thoughts? Have I gone crazy?
