REFLECTOR: Pressure testing Strakes. Help me!!

Mon Apr 9 11:36:53 CDT 2012

Just a quick word of caution.  When testing your tanks, you are dependent
on barometric pression and ambient temperature of your test environment.
To address that, you may want to have a parallel test system.  I did mine
with two water manometers (just tubing with water attached to some sealed
container.  If you make them match to start, then you can see if the tank
pressure is really changing versus the effects of ambient temp and
pressure.

Jerry Brainard
Jerry at JLBEnt.com

  	-------Original Message-------
From: Alex Balic
To: 'Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list'
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: Pressure testing Strakes. Help me!!
Sent: Apr 09 '12 9:26am

You can either use a water manometer, or a helium-quality latex balloon
(the method I used)

FROM: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] ON
BEHALF OF Tom Falls
SENT: Sunday, April 08, 2012 7:21 AM
TO: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list
SUBJECT: Re: REFLECTOR: Pressure testing Strakes. Help me!!

I'm going to the store this morning to get a plumbers plug. How much
pressure are folks using to test their fuel tanks? If its more then 1psi,
how are you achieving/measuring that?

I think I can get close to 1psi by blowing in the end of a hose connected
to the tank. Any more than 1psi will require a different method.

Thanks,

Tom

On Apr 6, 2012, at 11:43 PM, Mel Bina <[LINK:
mailto:pusherpilot1 at gmail.com] pusherpilot1 at gmail.com> wrote:

The fuel caps can be hard to seal  Go to the hardware store and buy a
plumbers plug to replace the fuel cap.  That solved the problem for me.

Mel Bina

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 4:59 PM, <[LINK: mailto:KMis178813 at aol.com]
KMis178813 at aol.com> wrote:

Tom

    Lube the O-Ring on the fuel caps. 8 out of 10 times that fixes the
leaks. Just hope it's not the other 2!

      Ken

In a message dated 4/6/2012 3:21:33 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, [LINK:
mailto:tomfalls6 at gmail.com] tomfalls6 at gmail.com writes:

Help! I’m struggling to find very very small leaks in both strakes after
closing them out. I am using a water manometer hooked to the strainer side
of each tank and a hose with a valve on the vent line. I blow in the hose
and when I see about 19” between each water column (equivalent to about
0.68 psi or 170 knots on an ASI) , I shut off the valve. Then I go around
and brush a soapy water mixture over all joints, fittings, seams etc.
Initially I found and fixed a few leaks. For instance I had to tighten the
clamps on the sight gages. On the left tank the manometer drops from 19” to
18” of H2O in 30 seconds (+/- 5 seconds). On the right tank it’s about 10
minutes to drop from 19” to 18”. I am at the point where looking for
bubbles with soapy water is not revealing the location of the leaks.

Any ideas?? How are others finding leaks? Should I maybe use a higher
pressure in the tanks? If so, how much pressure is enough and how is this
done?

Thanks in advance,

Tom

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