First up was finding that leak on the left side. The strake itself was fine, the pipe I had made to the common sump was fine, the sump seems OK BUT…. Out of sight the join between the pipe and the sump had a leak where the underside joins that you can’t see. Just enough for a slow drip. I hadn’t put enough flox where I couldn’t see it. Rookie mistake eh?

I wanted to seal the pipe to sump join with flox so that fuel would not leak into the foam. This was just a matter of grinding out the area around the bottom of the pipe. Once done I filled this with flox and a bit of peel ply on top and let it cure overnight. Being winter here, the heater was again on all night and all day in the workshop. Not for me, I can put on a jumper, its all about getting the temperature up for the epoxy.

After the cure I’ve sealed the end of the pipe with a scrap bit of glassed foam. I’ve used 5mt glue and micro to make it thick for a good seal. I later want to pressure test the strakes for leaks separately so that block will stay there for a while.

All I had to do was pour some water with a little dish-washing liquid into the pipe and wait to see if it was going to leak.

Dry as a bone after leaving it all day. Lets call it good and move on.

I’ve found some stainless steel strainers for my outlet covers.

A bit of work with the angle grinder and most of the weight was gone leaving fine mesh for my cover. I did want to use a large area strainer too so that it would be almost impossible to fully block with debris. I glassed this in two stages. Just the bottom part with flox first and using gaffer tape to retain the shape where I wanted it. Stainless mesh is quite floppy once you remove the strainer rim.

Stage two was a line of glass that joins the strainer to the fuel tank wall. This is the right side done.

Now I know the left side is leak free at least with the top open I put the first stage of the strainer in there today.

The last part of this two day job was to flox on the right strake top. I got the peel ply off with a bit of a struggle and cleaned it all up very carefully. Of course I’d cleaned the tank area as well…. several times. I applied a thin coat of epoxy on the strake top underside and after that mixed a good 144 grams of flox which was soon used up.

Another couple of batches of flox were used on the strake mating surface.

Yes I has previously very carefully sanded this hat top surface so it was not shinny. Yes I had ground down the bare foam areas for some glass to glass on the insides. Yes I did wet it all out with pure epoxy before the flox. Yes I did enjoy the prospect of no peel ply for a change too.

I mated the two surfaces and wiggled them in an inch or so back and forth for a while. Next was to cover it in plastic and put on the weights. The plastic was a template I’d made of where the strakes are, but I’d put on the left one. Opps… easy fix the right one went on next. This way I know exactly where the top hats are so I could place the weights right where the flox surfaces were mating.

I’d previously hot glued foam blocks to the underside of the strakes so that I could clamp onto what was a curved surface. No way clamps could work otherwise. I used a bit of aluminum as a clamping jig and I should have a good seal at the leading edge.

All my ducks in a row here. Time to call it a night.