February 10, 2006

Here, you can see I’ve bent the arms for the fuel sender floats. Now then, this was a source of confusion for me, as the fuel tank drawing showed 3" between bends. On the sheet that came with the senders, it said 3 3/16" between bends for the RV-8 (the RV-7 wasn’t listed). I thought the -7 and -8 wings were the same, so these seem to be conflicting. I went ahead and figured out what I needed myself and went with that.

Here you can see how I figured it out. I wanted the fuel sender to read empty before the fuel pick up ran out of fuel to pick up. Seems like the safest way to go to me. I know that these senders read full for some time on the gauges too, so I tried to make the up position be withing the 1/8" specified on the plans.

Now, you may notice that the sender body is actually pointing up in the above picture. Well, this was somewhat confusing too, as the sender in the plans is pointing down! I need to check how this is going to work out with the fuel level gauges, because if they’re reading backwards, it’s obviously no good! On the EFIS, I can calibrate accordingly, but I have the Van’s gauges too as a backup, and there ain’t no choice as to how those work! If it doesn’t work, I will have to make my first call into Van’s for a tech problem! Since I had a QB kit, the fuel tanks were complete, including the sender access covers. The holes all look correct to the plans, so it must be the fuel sender that has the issue.

Here’s the tank drawing depicting the fuel sender. Hmmmmm.

I also cleaned the wing underside. They were filthy from sitting around for so long. Once I’d cleaned them, I tapped the holes for the wing tie downs, 3/8"-16.