Section 28 Completed

Friday night and Saturday morning I worked on completing the installation of the fuel system. Only the forward return line had to be done to accomplish this, but it happened to be the line that needed the experience from all the previous sections to get successfully completed.
It started with the artsy bending of the forward vertical section that will pick up the fuel at the firewall shelf and run it down into the tunnel. Therefore it needed a 90 degree bend to become horizontal as well as an offset bend to get to where the cushioned clamp is after passing the fuel transducer of the supply line.


To allow for small length adjustments while getting the flared end attached to the fitting I have learned that an S bend can be very helpful. So I added that right at the upper end of the line.


It turned out to be a good idea to do an aggressive S bend here as the upper part was way too long with the 14.5" requested by the instructions. While adjusting I needed to put some masking tape on the lower 90 degree bend to avoid scratching the primer off the skin. Feeding the long horizontal end of the tube into the tunnel was another story. watch the tube when it's sliding under the flaperon mixer as it wants to scratch and scrape on it (not good for neither one).


Once in place make sure that you press the tubing down underneath the mixer to allow for full uninterrupted travel.


When you have attached the forward end to the fitting temporarily you can then work on cutting off the tube on the other end and flare the end for the bulkhead fitting that you had hopefully installed before you put the belly skin on. Otherwise I am expressing my deepest condolences at this point.
Do not forget to put the nut and the sleeve on on this one! There's not enough tubing left if you do.


This concluded the activities on Friday night. This morning I finished the installation. Free hand bending the forward part to accommodate for the fact that I had cut off the tube too short - although I had the feeling it would be long and already anticipating adding some free hand S bends to shorten it.
Getting the screw into this cushioned clamp took me about 30 minutes! This was partly owed to the fact that it took me 8 minutes to determine that the hole was not large enough to let the screw pass into the nutplate. First I thought this K1000-3 was another mishap where I installed a -08 but this wasn't the case. I used a counter sinking tool to widen the hole enough to let the screw pass. The rest of the time was owed to the line being a tad too short.


From there it runs into the tunnel and passes the fuel valve...


then under the mixer and through the front of the bulkhead.


Here it then attaches to the bulkhead fitting. The only access to this area is through the belly access hole.


While I was tightening the nut on the fitting I noticed that although I thought I had tightened the fitting very well, it did move with the nut. Darn it! Fortunately my wife was here to help me and hold the wrench on the opposite side so I could tighten nut and fitting.
With my wife present at the time I was done with this I quickly ran the last section of my blow pressure test and found the return line to be good.
Section 28 took me just short of 16 hours, 15.75 hours to be precise, including the learning curve on how to bend and flare tubing.