I’m sure everyone who surfs this site (all three of you, including my mom) has been wondering why there are no updates. Our move to the new house took most of the summer, and then we disappeared to South Africa on vacation. It’s September now, and the shop is back up and running, so it’s time to get back to the tanks.

Here’s one tank back in the jig for match-drilling and countersinking of the skin-to-baffle holes. This process is slightly tricky, since the tank skins are exactly the minimum thickness (0.032″) for countersinking.

Captain John stopped by for a visit. We think that the wingtip plexi would make a great low-profile canopy.

After the Z-brackets were in place, I followed the Checkoway MethodTM and fitted the clecoed tank on the wing.

With the tank in place the inboard Z-brackets were drilled, and after the outboard leading edges were removed, the outboard Z-brackets were drilled as well. Read and heed Van’s instructions to use a drill stop when doing this work – it’s damn easy to drill into the spar web or stiffeners if you’re not careful. Here’s a pic of the inboard bracket.

After the Z-brackets at each end of the tanks were drilled, the tank skins came off and the other Z-brackets were match-drilled to the baffles. Here’s the left tank with skin removed, just before match-drilling.

With drilling complete on both tanks, the wings came out of the jig for our move to the new house.

The last two weeks have been hectic. We’re on the verge of closing on a house, so that means getting the wings to a point where everything, including the tank-to-wing attachments, are aligned and match-drilled in the current jig.

I don’t have any pictures of the Z-brackets in fabrication, so you’ll just have to imagine the process of drilling the brackets to the wing, then deburring, alodining, priming and riveting nutplates to them. Here’s a pic of the final product on one wing – the Z-brackets are bolted to one wing and ready to be drilled in assembly with a tank baffle.

I’ve been helping John Sannizzaro with his fuel tanks, so I’m not too worried about the process. In fact, I’m looking forward to something that doesn’t require very much priming. I’m really learning to hate that stuff.

The only question in my mind was whether to follow Vans’ instructions for fitting the tank to the Z-brackets, or to use the modified method that Dan Checkoway details in his website. I decided to go with the modified method; I don’t like the idea of elongating holes in the tank baffles to make them fit, and if some alignment problem crops up in the modified method before drilling any holes, I can always go back to the plans method.

Per Dan’s method, I clecoed the right tank together. All the cautions mentioned about fitting leading edge ribs apply to the tank ribs – even more so, since both the tank skins and ribs are formed from thicker material. That makes the hole alignment process more difficult. As with the leading edge ribs, spending some time smoothing the nose of each tank rib and making sure the flanges are 90 degrees to the rib will help the fitting process.

Here’s the right tank clecoed together.