Today’s primary task was to remove the sealant around the previous fuel tank baffle. Removing proseal isn’t fun, and requires a fair amount of sweat to accomplish.  I did a fair amount of research on the forums in advance and here are my tips for removing proseal.

• Purchase some tough plastic scrapers like the ones pictured below from harbor freight.  They’ll allow you to scrape the proseal without scratching the aluminum. Additionally, you can easily resharpen the plastic with the scotchbrite wheel.  Sharp edges help substantially.
• Next you can use a combination of scotchbrite pads, heat, MEK, and the scrapers to continuously work down the remaining sealant.  I personally didn’t use heat as I found it too time consuming for such a large sealant removal job.  I did use scotchbrite and MEK.
• A couple iterations of scraper – MEK – scotchbrite seems to do the trick!

Here are the tools I bought at Harbor Freight. The scrapers are for the proseal removal. The pneumatic angle grinder and sanding discs are for the wing skin scarf joints. Here is a “before picture” of the baffle proseal.And a picture after the first round of scraping.After the first scotchbrite / MEK run….And the final product!

Installing the baffle isn’t terribly difficult, nor is it a lengthy project.  Which means this tank is almost complete… for the second time!