Oil Tank Fab
05/10/13 14:24 Filed in: All
Completed Oil Tank and mounting hardware (finally).
Fiberglassing together tank halves. Tidy up the insides (some stray bits of glass and cloth needed trimming, clean the surfaces with acetone, and bond the sides with a thick mixture of flox and resin.
Check for extrusion out each edge and clamp the hell out of it.
The tank mount brackets. You can see my many trial cardboard templates.
Thankfully I had an old ZVBox case that was 0.048” steel which I could use as a donor since there really isn’t enough steel strapping supplied to make the brackets, especially in the weird shapes you actually need, as opposed to the nice straight ones that BJ shows.
The videos show only two mounting points, top and bottom. I added a third using the one of the lower forward case bolts as the mount point. This takes it from something that could vibrate with some play to being very, very rigid to the engine.
There are a few points in the instructions like this, where it seems a very simple mod can add immensely to the strength/quality. I am sure I’m not the first to do this.
Finished tank with fittings mounted. I glassed the tank in the fall, but only just now finished mounting it this spring. My long winter of distractions, international travel, and business has ended and I plan on making very good progress on the helicopter again.
Fiberglassing together tank halves. Tidy up the insides (some stray bits of glass and cloth needed trimming, clean the surfaces with acetone, and bond the sides with a thick mixture of flox and resin.
Check for extrusion out each edge and clamp the hell out of it.
The tank mount brackets. You can see my many trial cardboard templates.
Thankfully I had an old ZVBox case that was 0.048” steel which I could use as a donor since there really isn’t enough steel strapping supplied to make the brackets, especially in the weird shapes you actually need, as opposed to the nice straight ones that BJ shows.
The videos show only two mounting points, top and bottom. I added a third using the one of the lower forward case bolts as the mount point. This takes it from something that could vibrate with some play to being very, very rigid to the engine.
There are a few points in the instructions like this, where it seems a very simple mod can add immensely to the strength/quality. I am sure I’m not the first to do this.
Finished tank with fittings mounted. I glassed the tank in the fall, but only just now finished mounting it this spring. My long winter of distractions, international travel, and business has ended and I plan on making very good progress on the helicopter again.