Ahh that makes sense Ryan. Definitely get those avionics out of your closet and into an airplane. I thought they were sitting in the 185 and you were buying all new for the 182. Get them in sooner than later. Nothing wrong with swapping stuff around.

I got the airplane back from the paint shop! I thought you guys’d like my new 100LL blue inspired paint scheme!




In all seriousness, feck.

Fingers crossed it's not the bladder. If it is, I might just use the excuse of having not taken my oral & practical tests to let a real shop do the install. I’d love to get the experience of doing it myself, but it's kind of a huge job.

If you’re lucky it’ll be a bad gasket for the fuel sender or between the top of the cell and the inside of the top wing skin.

Last one I saw like this was dry rot in the top of the cell, it would leak out several little holes when topped all the way up.

Fun little project changing those cells ..... not!

Ya hopefully its a gasket. Usually when its the bladder there is some adhesive along with rhe fuel, making a sticky mess and it yellows the fuel a bit. So hopefully yoy will get away lucky...

I agree hopefully a sending unit gasket. Snug them up and see. First bladder I did took a solid 7 hr day with retaping. Long range are easier with the two access holes. I wouldn't be afraid to do it.

After some thorough investigation, new Eagle bladders have been ordered.

Lead time on the bladders and the shop’s backlog will keep me grounded until the 14th of next month. They’ll let me do some work myself, so it’s not a complete wash. However, the small delay gives me plenty of time to hit the ground running and get some house keeping items taken care of.

Let’s pull some pants off!

For the effort to replace bladders it makes more sense for you to get new bladders, but for anyone with more time than money I have a pair of long range bladders left over from my 183P project. They look to be in good shape but have not been thoroughly inspected.

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wingnut185 wrote:"I might just use the excuse of having not taken my oral & practical tests" So, you have been an aircraft owner for four years, have now bought a second airplane, and you don't have a pilots license?? Maybe you should rearrange your priorities?

He’s talking about the practical for his A&P. Maybe relax a little bit.

Having no A&P doesn’t keep many of our members from tackling large airplane maintenance projects.

The 3 written tests are the harder IMO. The practical and oral were a breeze in comparison!

Thanks Halestorm, love your Skylane by the way! Have you been able to go on floats yet?
Anyways, I know I could do the bladders if given enough time, but I’m also certain that a “real” shop will be able to do just as good of a job if not better in less time with less chances of making things worse. I’ll still get some experience with the install either way so its not a complete wash.

I should have my bladders either tomorrow or next Monday and I’m definitely going to explore doing the job myself. It looks like I’ll be grounded till next month at the latest, so it wouldn’t hurt to get the ball rolling if I can. The main problem that I see is not having a heated hangar and temperatures being near freezing right now. All of the documentation I have been able to find on doing a bladder replacement mention that it’s much better to have temperatures above 70 before attempting the install. My little portadeath space heater probably won't do what I need it to if I want to get things hot enough to make the bladders come out easier. Maybe stash it in one of the FBOs hangars overnight. Not sure how I'd get that done yet.

I will say that these last two weeks have really made me reevaluate my need for an avionics upgrade, especially since my install has been pushed to the spring time. I’m not stubborn enough to realize that three months of perfect weather are three months of flying weather. I'm not sure if its the withdrawal or that you guys are finally getting to me.

And Aryana, I've found it exactly the opposite in my case. The written tests are really not too big of a deal as I'm decent with the knowledge portion. It's explaining why things works and actually "fixing" it that's been difficult for me. Then again we haven't had much of any hands on since we shut down earlier this year. At least I got good at sheet metal while we were still in person. The 185 will determine if that is a lie or not. lol.

When I used to install those bladders regularly and it was winter we’d lay them on top of the boiler in the morning and they’re nice and pliable by just after lunch. Same time frame during the summer except I’d put them on the picnic table on the sunny side.

Halestorm wrote:When I used to install those bladders regularly and it was winter we’d lay them on top of the boiler in the morning and they’re nice and pliable by just after lunch. Same time frame during the summer except I’d put them on the picnic table on the sunny side.

These friendly tips are why I keep coming back. Thanks for the suggestion!! Did you guys have any techniques to get the bladders that are being replaced to cooperate a little easier? From my understanding of this whole project, they don't like getting displaced from their homes, especially when they're cold.

It really helps to tape around the edges of your holes, keeps your arms from getting cut up as bad, and also helps keep the new tank from getting damaged while going in. I've never had to much problem getting them out. I also tried something new on my last change and I found it really helped. Once the old bladder was out, I put a 900W heater in the tank bay over night. This dried out all the tape glue and made it much easier to clean out. When its tacky and soaked with avgas it is miserable to clean out. Maybe I'm asking for an explosion? What do you guys think?

Pretty hard to explode with such a wide open hole, most likely it’ll just catch on fire [emoji91] [emoji1783]

Best trick I had was to drill the whole butt rib out of the wing, made for excellent access! Of course we had the wings off for other reasons already...

That would work well for me and the 185. Gotta deal with some popping rivets on the wing. Too bad the wings don't need to come off the 182

When my friend ask if he could help his mechanic replace his 185 bladders, mechanic said sure, come by about 9:30 am. Friend said I thought you opened at 8 am.
Mechanic said, I usually do but on days I replace bladders I always stop by church first.

Cut them up in the wing. Easy to pull out in pieces.

The difficulty of this job is much less in the technical area and more so in the PITA regime. It just sucks, it's not hard. Good ventilation for the fumes of whatever you use to clean out the old glue and a heated shop are nice to have so it sucks less.

When I was in a&p school the shop I worked at had me do bladders in an older 210. He said if you do this and still want to get your a&p you’re cut out for it.


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Tom wrote:When I was in a&p school the shop I worked at had me do bladders in an older 210. He said if you do this and still want to get your a&p you’re cut out for it.


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That's funny!