Tunnel and smoke tank
Spent some time tonight cleaning up some details on the exhaust tunnel panel. I smoothed out most of the bumps and wrinkles on the 'wings' that overlap the side panels. It looks pretty good now. The rest of the mounting holes were drilled and everything is assembled with sheet metal screws. I got an order in from Aircraft Spruce today that has all the nut plates, rivets and machine screws needed to finish up the job. I should have a chance to get some of that done this Sunday.
I mounted up the gear with the firewall in place. This let me trim the lower flange on the firewall for the new gear legs and sockets. Once the fuselage was sitting on the gear again, I dropped in the fuel tank so that I could check the fit of the new smoke tank from Smoking Airplanes. I mocked up the tank out of cardboard and was able to verify the fit and location. The new tank will be 3.5 gallons, but I expect that there will be more useable oil than in the upper wing tank. This should give at least 5 or 6 minutes of smoke at the right settings. It could be stretched a little longer by turning the flow rate down and making a little less smoke.
I'm planning on using the external fill option on the new tank. The extended fill tube will run past the front of the fuel tank and behind the instrument panel. It would be a tight fit, but with the planned changes on the panel, the right side will have plenty of clearance for the new fill tube. This should make it much easier to fill than trying to fill the tank directly in the cockpit. It will also be easier to fill than the top wing tank.
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