30 July 06 - Service Bulletin, Tank Senders

Been putting this off for months, time to bite the bullet and actually do it: a chunk of today was spent safety wiring the pickup tubes in the tanks, in accordance with a service bulletin that came out this past February. When this came out, there was some debate in some of the various RV lists and forums as to whether or not this was really necessary, and I'm not entirely convinced it is. This fitting is supposed to be torqued on there pretty tight, and after just being torqued, it's not going anywhere. However, it's worth noting that this did not come pre-torqued on the quickbuild tanks. The airplane that had this come loose (and was the reason for the service bulletin being issued) was a quickbuild kit, so I'd say that there's at least a moderate chance that it was never torqued correctly in the first place.

However, there is no reason not comply with this, and all sorts of reasons why it's a good idea: insurance reasons and resale value come to mind. Also, because the wings are off now, it's no big deal to actually do it. So, here we go:

This is the only difficult part: drill a hole through the fitting so that you have a place to attach the safety wire. If the hole goes all the way through to the inside, that should still be okay: where you are drilling is above where the seal is, so you should still have no leaks.	Then put the safety wire on and anchor it around the top fitting. This is probably the best place to have the hole, but I didn't really plan this, it just happened to work out really well.
The other part of this exercise was to attach the resistive fuel tank sender. This is how the sender attaches to the main plate.	The final step is to attach the wire and float. This has to be bent and trimmed according to the plan, which is more important for us QB folks: after it's in the tank, we can't see it, so you're going with what you've got at that point - it better be right.

A few things worth noting, here, if you'd like to save yourself some frustration:

• The fuel senders are attached with five screws. However, they are placed in such a way that they will only fit one direction, which (fortunately) is the proper orientation. If the holes don't line up, that's okay: just keep spinning them around, and they eventually will.
  
  
• However, the senders do come in a left and right model, so if you have all the holes lined up but the sender is pointing the wrong way, you probably have the left sender in the right tank, or vice versa. (Yeah, ask me how I know this.)

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