The right fuel tank gets a standard fuel pickup – an L-shaped aluminum tube mounted to the access plate that picks up fuel from the aft inboard corner of the tank. A few years back, Van’s found out that these pickups could, if not installed properly, rotate up – rendering unusable any fuel below the pickup. The solution for this problem is an anti-rotation bracket, a piece of aluminum angle that fits over the pickup fitting and is riveted to the access plate. Look at the picture and the function is obvious.

The only catch to fabricating this bracket is accurately locating the 9/16″ hole that accomodates the fitting. If the hole isn’t quite right – too far out or in – the fitting won’t fit squarely on the access plate. Maybe I’m the only builder to have problems with this…