Another item that's shown in one of the plans drawings but not really mentioned in the assembly instructions is the F-796A fuel tank attach brackets. These protrude from a spot on the forward fuselage, and get bolted to the corresponding mounting ears on the forward ends of the wing fuel tanks. I don't need these brackets yet themselves per se, but the mounting of them also involves a series of parts on the inside of the fuselage, which is a job I need to complete.
The interior parts for mounting each tank attach bracket are a piece of angle and a stackup of aluminum spacers:
I cut and shaped these to fit between the lower longerons, on the forward side of the F-902 bulkhead. This required unhooking the fuel tank vent plumbing and moving it out of the way. My recommendation to anyone reading this is to install these parts much earlier, so you don't have to rejigger your vent lines like I did.
I drilled the upper and lower bolt holes by match-drilling through existing rivet holes. Then I installed the tank attach bracket with a temporary hardware store bolt in its upper mounting hole, and match-drilled its lower bolt hole through the centerline of the mounting parts below. That step was much easier once I picked up a 12" long 3/16" drill bit. The rivets visible under the bracket in this photo are just sitting in their holes to help keep things aligned.
After drilling and deburring everything, I primed and painted the mounting angles with my interior color (Rustolem Dark Pewter textured) and painted the steel attach brackets with Dark Machine Grey enamel. While I was having a painting day, I also painted the spar gussets from the last post in the same interior color.
I had to enlist Mary's help to drive the rivets, which are in an inconvenient spot for solo riveting:
I made sure that I'll be able to bolt the tank attach brackets in place when I need to, but I'm not going to attach them just yet because they seem like a real knee-banging, pants-tearing jobsite hazard.
Back inside of the fuselage, I was able to reshape the fuel vent lines and re-clock the elbow fittings to clear the newly-installed mounting angles. Thank goodness for soft 3003 tubing.
