6.5 hours
An unexpected day in the shop... over the past couple of days Seattle has received nearly a foot of snow, the town is simply not equipped to address significant snow fall and our office building, along with many downtown, is closed. The mighty Subaru thought nothing of the conditions ;)
I started the day making some changes to the flange and drain work from yesterday. On the drain I did not seal the outside contact points with proseal and decided that that was an error; no issue in drilling out the rivets, cleaning everything, and riveting again. On the fill flange I was not happy with how the rivets set... they were short and did not have enough grab on the thick flange. The load is very light on the flange and it is not a structural point so -3 rivets are technically fine but they just do not have much pull on the thick material. I drilled them out, cleaned the flange, and contersunk for -4 rivets... I probably should have just left it all alone... oh well, it is done and I think that it actually looks better balanced visually.
Then on to the ribs with proseal. After buttering a rib it really slides in easily. Finishing three ribs and feeling pretty good I noticed a couple of dings on the leading edge... I dropped my bucking bar inside of the tank while riveting the second rib and it banged the skin from the inside... the dings are really pretty small, but anything short of perfection on the skin jumps right out to the eye. Oh well... I plan to use a wooden form on the inside and tap the skin with the rivet gun set very low and see if that will clean things up enough to disappear with paint...
My chemical resistant gloves and respirator have been put to good use... until today... with proseal everywhere I pretty much gave up and ended up nearly bathing in MEK to clean it all up... I hope that experience with the stuff will reduce the mess and casual use of MEK...
