Aft Fuel Return Line Installed

I had started the endeavor on the Fuel Return Lines a day ago but stalled and didn't really have to report any noticeable progress after 2 hours of cutting, bending and flaring. The reason was that although I followed the plans meticulously and my bends were nearly perfect, I had forgotten that following the plans in this particular case was not a good idea as I had deviated from them before as my bender didn't allow to put a bend so close to the end of a tube as the Van's bender does when I fabricated the fuel supply line. Now the return line was supposed to get bent to follow the route of the supply line closely so they could get attached to each other. By following the plans I produced a really nice piece of aluminum scrap tubing.


You can see both tubes together in this picture. The right one I did a day ago when I noticed that this won't really work out and it also was too short as due to my deviated bend I needed a little more tubing that Van's had measured. The left one is the one I partly improvised tonight. There is one bend missing in this photo which will get the tube to the bulkhead fitting. This bend and the flare was done after verifying that this time everything fit and matched the idea of the plans.


I didn't get a chance to check if the fitting is air tight but this will be done tomorrow when my wife can lend me a hand, um, better a finger to cover the fitting on the other side of the bulkhead.
Last step was then to install the chafing buffers which seem to be made from a thick fuel hose and held in place by (quite heavy) stainless steal clamps. It's a bit tricky to get to the clamps to tighten them but fortunately the sides are still open at this time and the lightening holes are big enough to get your arm through them.




Taken from the right side of the fuselage.


Again from the right side, showing the overlap of the two tubings.


And finally the distance of the two tubings at the tank mounting point. At this point this is pretty much just an educated guess but the fine tuning should be easy as the 1/4" tubing can be bent by hand easily.