See page 4 step 2.


March 21, 2007:  During the full preassembly of the tanks but before the rear baffles went on (while there's still access to the inside of the tanks) I match drilled the skin holes into the J-stiffeners.

March 20, 2007:  I deburred the tank attachment brackets with most of the other parts prior to pre assembly of the tanks.


See page 4 step 2.


March 22, 2007:  After the full pre-assembly of the tanks I set out to get all the final drilling done.  I mostly stuck with the order in the plans to ensure I got everything. After the skins to the ribs, next was match drilling the skins to the tank attachment bracket.

March 24, 2007:  We're going with the stock fuel caps.  Van's sells a lockable fuel cap for something like $100 a piece and since we plan to hangar our plane, didn't feel it was worth the additional expense.  Anyway, the first step in fitting these things is to adjust the flange to match the curvature in the skin.  The flanges have a bend at opposite ends that gets it pretty close, but you still have to do a little adjusting.  In addition to adjusting the bend I also used the belt sander to sand a bit of the apex of the bend down to make a smother transition.  The flange on the left has been adjusted and sanded.  The one on the right shows the cap and flange as delivered... notice, no rivet holes yet... that's coming.

March 24, 2007:  Once the curve of the flanges was acceptable it was time to fit the fuel caps & flanges to the skins.  With the caps in place in the flanges to aid in centering the flanges in the opening of the skins, the flanges were match drilled to the skins.