Cleco'n Left Fuel Tank

One would think that clecoing the fuel tank skin to the ribs would but a 5 minute job, but the skin is a lot thicker, and there are about twice as many holes. Since the skin is thicker, its a lot hard to get it to bend around the ribs. I ended up starting with the front most bottom hole, and then working my way backward alternating from the top and bottom, and basically wrapped the skin around the ribs.

In some cases, the holes were not in alignment so I used a scratch awl to assist. I just pushed the awl into the hole, and it would pull things into alignment and made it much easier.


Here is the back side of the fuel tank with the ribs and skin cleco'd together. Unfortunately, this will get taken apart and put back together at least two more times - possibly three. You can see the lower hole in the rib. This low hole allows almost 100% of the fuel to be used. Not that you'd ever want to get that low, but you don't want to fly around with a few gallons of fuel you can't use either. I'll be fabricating a "trap droor" for the most inboard rib later on. This will only let the fuel flow into that rib, but not out.


Now the rear baffle is cleco'd on as well.