Factory plastic fuel tank installation

[robysonex]

Hello, I am mounting the factory plastic fuel tank in my legacy Sonex, and even if the glare shield 30°angles are Ok, the tank is touching only in the central part, leaving something like 3/4" or more in the lateral upper part between it and glare shield. Is it normal or should it touch in all the surface?

Thanks for your help.

Roberto from Italy
Sonex Legacy s/n 1433

[Area 51%]

Completely normal.
When I fabricated an aluminum replacement, I made use of that space and was able to get an additional 2.5+ gallons of capacity.

[ampzapper]

My legacy S/N 1417 is the exact same way. It's also really tight between the upper firewall cross tie angle and glareshield there. I'm going to end up putting in countersunk rivets between the crosstie and firewall stiffener and in the top angle to the glareshield. Here's some other posts about fitment:
https://sonexbuilders.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4791&hilit=fuel+tank+gap
https://sonexbuilders.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3141&p=24023&hilit=fuel+tank+glare+shield+gap#p24023

Also when test fitting I found that with the instrument panel in place the fuel tank will go through but if you extend the instrument panel down like many do it would wouldn't clear the cross tunnel. Something to think about for the assembly order.

[robysonex]

Hi, thanks for your help; so, as far as I can understand, it's normal that tank is not following shield shape, and that can be ok (...say so...) but have find that for closing front and rear straps I need to use longer bolts: for the rear strap AN3-18 and for the front one AN3-14 instead of the AN3-10 indicated for both on plans...is this also quite normal??

[DCASonex]

Sounds normal, but remember that these are rotational molded tanks, and they are like snow flakes, no two are exactly alike.

David A. Sonex TD