I wasn't totally satisfied with my test of weaving the capacitive
sender wire through holes. The edges of the holes were kinda digging into
the insulation. So I used a miniature screwdriver to bend the edges of
the holes so the wire could pass through more easily. Here's what it looks
like. No more problems with the insulation, but it's sure an ugly installation.
Let's see where the wire needs to run on the rib. Hrm...if I drill a series of
holes here, they're going to go through the stiffening ring on the left.
Routing the wire this way is nearly as direct, but avoids the stiffening ring.
I'm not sure I want to weave the wire through a bunch of holes. I'm going
to wait and consider making some wire clips that are screwed down.
After thinking about it some more, I decided that the simplest, fastest, easiest
thing to do is just drill the series of holes and weave the wire through.
Who cares if it's ugly...this thing is gonna be sealed up in the tank and noone's
ever gonna know. Here are the two ribs with the wire routing holes drilled and
stretched out so the edges don't cut the insulation.
Next, I had to decide on placement of the various fittings and connectors on the
inboard most rib. Here's what I ended up with. Going from left to right are
the fuel pickup (no fitting shown), the return line, the capacitive sender
BNC connector, the capacitive sender compensator BNC connector, and finally the
vent line on the right.
I drilled all these locations with a #40 drill bit then clamped them to the
drill press table and used a series of increasing diameter drill bits to
open up the holes.
It actually took quite a while. After about 2 1/2 hours, I had all the
fitting and connector holes drilled in both inboard ribs.