Hello Kevin Walsh
I have a slow tank leak that is emerging from the bottom corner where
the spar and strak meet.
I came across Kevins Walsh fix that he posted in response to S. Cambells
posting of "fuel tank" (topic message# 108414). Unfortunately, I had several questions.
Also, I was looking for some guidance here.
First question, would you (Kevin W.) change or handle the leak any differently from what you did
to fix your plane, Cozy IV (having had a year to further think on it).
Question 2: when you fixed your 10" square hole, could you tell me how you did it.
Did you re-install the foam? how did you glass the inside of the patch to seal it?
Question 3: Is it possible to instead of making a 10" square incision. Just Widen the
gas cap enough that you could stick your hand in the tank to do the repair and be able to see
inside it. Are there bigger fuel caps?
Re: Fuel Tank
Kevin R. Walsh
8/24/20 #108414
On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 8:21 AM Steve Campbell via groups.io <campb001=umn.edu@groups.io> wrote:
I had a problem on my right tank where when the tank was completely full, in a climb, it would wick from the strake to fuselage seam at the top, through the foam to a 1/8" diameter channel that I had put through to run the coax for my fuel level sensor, then into the rear cockpit as a drip-drip-drip.
I would suggest that there is no magical cure here. You need to find the leak and properly patch it with EZ87 or whatever epoxy you used for your tanks. In my case I ended up cutting a ~10" square hole in the strake top to access the corner, which had been insufficiently smeared with wet flox when originally. I sanded down that intersection and put a nice EZ87 and flox fillet in there, and it has been perfect since then.
--
Kevin