Carl. Fuel leaks can come from several spots on the plane. You can have a loose fitting at the fuel pump that seeps fuel in flight. Look for loose hoses and fittings firewall forward. A more common problem are seeping tanks. In many cases that means corroded tanks that need your attention. Look for wet seams around the inboard side of the main tanks. You can do that by unscrewing the wing root fairing on the bottom. If the Tanks itself appear dry around the rivets, but not at the fitting, you might be lucky to have a loose fitting, but in many cases you will find one or more missing rivets there. That again makes the tank a candidate for overhaul. The header tanks leak too. Problems go from small cracks over pin sized holes to big size corrosion. It is also easy to over tighten the fitting on the bottom of the tank on later style tanks. That makes them crack and seep. It takes patience to find the leaks. It is possible to have more than one at the time. The light blue colored Avgas sometimes leaves visible traces, but it was much easier to find leaks with red dyed Avgas in the tanks. Too bad, it is not available anymore. Check this web-page for a few examples of tanks and how problems can look like. http://www.ercoupe.info/?n=Main.TankRepair Hartmut
To: [email protected]: [email protected]: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 02:06:50 +0000Subject: [ercoupe-tech] Newbie seeks...Part II Okay, N415CB flew yesterday and it was a hoot! My instructor had us squawks: 1. Overpowering odor of 100LL in the cabin. We were flying with the left tank pretty much empty and the right tank with about 4.5 gallons of fuel and full header tank. The fuel transfer shut-off valve was open as I was told by the previous owner to not close it. On previous days when I did only taxi exercises and then the high speed taxiing to aborted take off, I didn't smell the fuel odor. . . _________________________________________________________________ It’s the same Hotmail®. If by “same” you mean up to 70% faster. http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_hotmail_acq_broad1_122008
