This is the vertical portion just forward of the shelf area. The bent tubing is my capacitance fuel sender. The port with the red cap is fuel input from my Aux. tank system. I'm providing for a baggage-area-mounted aux/ferry tank system. When the main tank has burned down 5-7 gallons, I will activate a pump which will move fuel from the aux tank to the header tank. The other fitting with the tubing attached is my fuel vent.

Phil is buttering up the flange of the lower portion of the fuel tank with Hysol in anticipation of gluing the two halves together.

You can see the finger strainer poking through the bottom of the tank. You'll also notice the Facet electric pump on the bottom of the tank. More about that later...

Once the two halves had been glued together and the glue had a chance to fully cure, we ran several layers of fiberglass over the seam. This is a good example of a part curing with a vacuum system applied.

The glass tape was a standard West Systems wet layup. After that, we applied a layer of peel ply cloth followed by a layer of bleeder cloth--which looks a bit like blanket batting. The last step is to create an airtight baggie to suck it all down to the tank. The yellow stuff around the perimeter is kind of like weather stripping--only it's really pliable and really gooey. Once we thought we we were sealed up, we applied vacuum and then chased pinhole leaks around the perimeter.

The vacuum pump is not in the picture. It was sitting on the floor and the hoses were run through the pressure pot just in case any resin made it through the lines... the pressure pot would contain the resin and not allow it to reach the pump itself.

This isn't a fantastic picture, but I guess it gets the point across.

Even though the original installation doesn't call for an electric boost pump, I decided it wouldn't be a bad idea. I installed this Facet fuel pump inline as the fuel makes its way from the tank ON/OFF valve to the gascolator.

We fabricated a phenolic block and tapped it to accept a couple of AN3 bolts to mount the pump. In this picture, we're about to glue the phenolic block to the tank bottom so that's why the area is taped off.

I cut a hole in the forward skin to let the fuel cap poke through. It was a definite case of measure 10x, have somebody else check it, cut a half-dozen holes AND THEN cut the final hole. I definitely DID NOT want to re-make that front piece!

I'm pretty satisfied with the fit of this hole given all the potential for screwing it up. There will be a light bead of RTV or caulking around the perimeter to prevent a fuel overfill from running down into the fuselage.

Not to gloat, but I like my fuel cap installation much better than the original builder's installation!