Wings: Fuel tanks. Left tank capacitance probes and baffle install.

I decided to redo my fuel tanks.  See here for why.  The entries specific to the redone tanks are here.

Capacitive probes on left tank are installed.  I had to replace a screw from last week since it got stripped going into the nutplate.  Thankfully the nutplate wasn't damaged.  The work for the left tank was identical to the right tank, so I won't go into as much detail here.

I put the masking tape just over the skin's baffle rivet holes this time.  Turns out it wasn't as useful as I had anticipated:  When the tape is removed, it just takes the sealant bead with it since the bead just fell aft onto the tape.  Here is the sealant on the skin ready for baffle install.  You can see the capacitive probe wire in the image.

As with the right tank I put a very thin layer of sealant on the baffle flanges (shown below) and aft rib flanges.

Here is an image looking aft through the filler flange to see the sealant along the baffle-skin joint.

And here are the "shop heads" of the AD-42H blind rivets along the rib flanges as seen through the filler flange.

I had to remove a AN470AD4-4 rivet I put on the outboard attach zee (it needs a -5).  With all the wet sealant, I realized a "chip catcher" was necessary.

And here is the left tank, inverted for curing.

 

I also countersunk for and placed the final baffle rivets on the right tank.  After it cures, it will be test time.  Once the left cures I will go through the same process.