Fuel Leak Fix?

Saturday morning I got to the hangar early to take a look at the fuel leak. First I had to remove the vinyl from the wing skin

Vinyl Removed

And then remove all the rivets to get the skin off. It wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be though it sure was humid enough that I wished I was still in bed.

Skin Removed

Sadly there was no obvious sign of the source of the fuel leak though some residue suggested that it was not from the fuel sender screws. So I decided my first course of action would be to remove the fuel line fitting and re-goop the threads with Loctite 567.

Fuel Fitting

Thanks to a lack of the right sized spanner, getting the fitting out was really tough, more so with the heat but I finally managed it.

Fitting removed

I cleaned it up and re-gooped and then struggled even harder to get it back in tight inside the fuel tank. Teri had come out so I wouldn’t suffer alone and she went off to get a new spanner that I hoped would fit. Unfortunately the size I guessed was too big but in a show of mercy from the gods I lucked out with the “metric wrench” and a regular one and boom it was in.

For a bit of a break from the work, we installed some “Open” decals inside the doors.

Door sticker

I put a couple of gallons in the tank and left.

Going back to the hangar about 7 hours later there was no sign of a leak on the floor or on the bottom of the wing but….. when I looked inside the wing there was a tiny bead of fuel underneath the fuel line. This had to have been a different leak than before as this would take days to come through the skin and a little messing with the fuel line showed that I had not fully tightened it. So I tightened it and left for the day.

Sunday morning I got out early again (though not as early as I thought since there were already 4 or 5 people in their hangars) and this time there was no sign of a leak anywhere. So fingers crossed this is now fixed.

However…. the fuel gauge is showing empty even when there is 2-3 gallons in there. I decided I couldn’t face that and went back to bed, but I suspect that when I was cleaning up the fuel stain I pulled on the sender wire and it isn’t crimped on properly. I will look next weekend.

Just to check that there really was 2 gallons still in the tank I drained it and confirmed. So, fingers crossed….. inspection in two weeks.