Hi Folks!
I had some fuel weeping around the fuel sender on the right wing tank in my 25 year old RV-4, so I dropped the tank to inspect it and find the source of the leak. Imagine my surprise when I was able to scrape off the proseal around the sender and inspection plate with a fingernail! The rest of the accessible proseal on the tank is hard as is the other wing tank (which I previously removed a couple of years ago to replace the sender and add AOA plumbing forward of the spar).
I suspect a bad batch of sealant was used for the sender and inspection plate when the airplane was first built (or perhaps an non-hardening formulation). After a quarter century and couple of thousand hours, gas simply started to weep from some of the screws...
I will clean up the old sealant and reseal the plate and replace the old style Stewart Warner sender; but I'm curious if anyone has run into something similar and there are any lessons learned that might apply!
Happy New Year,
Vac
I had some fuel weeping around the fuel sender on the right wing tank in my 25 year old RV-4, so I dropped the tank to inspect it and find the source of the leak. Imagine my surprise when I was able to scrape off the proseal around the sender and inspection plate with a fingernail! The rest of the accessible proseal on the tank is hard as is the other wing tank (which I previously removed a couple of years ago to replace the sender and add AOA plumbing forward of the spar).
I suspect a bad batch of sealant was used for the sender and inspection plate when the airplane was first built (or perhaps an non-hardening formulation). After a quarter century and couple of thousand hours, gas simply started to weep from some of the screws...
I will clean up the old sealant and reseal the plate and replace the old style Stewart Warner sender; but I'm curious if anyone has run into something similar and there are any lessons learned that might apply!
Happy New Year,
Vac