Tonight was basically an instant replay of when I did the right stiffeners. Got everything cleaned and in place, mixed up a batch of sealant, gooped each stiffeners up and put in in place, clecoed 100%, smoothed out the squeezed-out sealant with a popsicle stick. Just as tedious as ever – nothing makes me go cross-eyed faster than staring intently at a stiffener while squeezing out the sealant.
I had a fair amount of sealant left, so I went ahead and fay sealed the fuel cap flange and then moved on to installing the fuel pickup in the left tank access cover. This turned out to be kind of challenging – I needed about four hands to hold everything in place. First I applied sealant around the bulkhead fitting and put it in place. Then while holding that, I put a bead around where the fitting emerged on the outside of the plate, then set the washer in place before spinning the nut in place to hold everything relatively steady. But then the anti-rotation bracket had to go in place, and it needed sealant under it, so I ended up loosening the nut again so I could ease that bracket into place without getting sealant everywhere. I added some more sealant to go between the nut and the washer on the outside as well.
Finally, after about half an hour of this madness, I had everything in place, and amazingly enough, I didn’t have sealant everywhere (not quite, at least). It was definitely time to quit for the night.
The assembled access cover:
And some inaugural sealant on the workbench top: (this is after I scrubbed the area with an acetone-soaked rag)
