I got to wade around in proseal today! That's always a good time. To kick things off, I cut and bent the fuel float sender wire and got it as close to "good" as I could (probably need to play around with it a bit yet though). The float is supposed to lie within 1/8" of the top and bottom skins as it moves back and forth, but because of the curve of the top skin, if I get it within 1/8" on the bottom, then the angle of it as it's in the full position puts part of it at almost 1/2" from the skin (the other end of the float still almost touches). I'm not sure if that's a big deal or not, considering I'd rather it be super accurate towards empty than at full. I'll always use a dipstick anyway, and I'll also be putting a fuel totalizer in, so the float senders aren't the only game in town. I'll look at it with fresh eyes another time. I retested the sender across the entire range from full to empty to make sure the resistance readings were correct.
Then I started with a bunch of proseal. I cleaned and scuffed all of the parts up and started with the fittings on the inboard rib and access plate. I didn't get many pictures of the process, since once the proseal comes out I don't really want to be messing with my phone. With the 90 degree fuel pickup fitting and straight vent fitting in, then I moved to the inside portions and installed the pickup tube itself and hooked the vent line up. Lastly, I installed the fuel sender body in the access plate. It just gets a ring of proseal as a gasket, and the screws just push through the sealant and gush out to create a barrier of proseal as well. The instructions call out that one screw needs to seat metal to metal though, so I kept one clean. I'm not really sure why that is the case, since there's nothing about it that would ground it or complete any kind of circuit. I'll have to reread that section and see if I can figure out why. It's possible that they just meant that the center screw has to stay clean.
One thing that I noticed while looking at my right tank skin is the fact that there are a number of holes that ended up kind of oblong. That was the first tank I drilled and was before I had figured out the secret behind getting the ribs in place. I think a lot of the ribs were under major tension and the clecos probably went in at an angle. Since the rib material is way stiffer than the skins, the rib holes dictated where the drill went. That meant the ribs turned out just fine, but the skin holes sometimes got elongated as the drill angled to find the rib hole. Most of the holes are fine, and for the few that are sprinkled around the tank, I can just use the "oops" rivets to upsize the holes. However, for whatever reason, both end rib locations were worse than anywhere else. It's totally fine to use oops rivets, but not too many in one place. So instead of going overboard on the end ribs, I decided to just up the size of rivets to 4-4 instead of the 3's. I re-drilled all of the end rib holes to 1/8" and re-dimpled to #40. It's probably overkill to do that many, but I figured it would look better to have a whole row of the larger rivet heads vs random ones. Not that it'll be noticeable anyway, but I'd know!
