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Shop is close to startup! Here are the expected costs: ~$9800 for 4 new Millennium cylinder kits, piston pins/caps, new cam, DLC lifters, gasket kit, new alternator belt, quick drain(I bought and supplied) ~$2700 for all main and rod bearings, 8 new plungers (lifters), 8 new tappet sockets (plungers), 8 new rod bolts, 8 new rod bolt nuts, 4 new pushrods, 2 new lower engine mount bushings, oil and filter, new spark plug wire, incidentals/shop supplies ~$10,500 labor for annual, remove/reinstall engine ($3250), IRAN engine ($5000), IFR certification ($425), R-N-R electric step, flush oil cooler/lines, running /final engine configurations tax ~$220 Total so far is ~$23,220 for this year’s ‘annual’. Give or take a couple hundred more. Hoping that is it for now but that is an approximate cost based on shops current estimate. Once initial run is completed I’ll know for sure. -Don

Here is an update on testing and issues in the field.

I don’t feel the need to get in a back and forth of who’s more experienced. Like I stated, you get to choose what you like or what you think is best for you. Thankfully, I get to do the same. I have ACF-50 in stock and use it as needed. My Mooney isn’t based on a carrier or getting a saltwater bath any time soon.

I have to admit that I'm disappointed. I'm a skeptic but I wanted to believe in G100UL, I was impressed by George Braly's willingness to engage, and I wanted to give G100UL the benefit of the doubt. As a fuel, it really does appear to work and I thought GAMI was sitting on a goldmine; I could even see an easy marketing campaign starting at Sun 'N Fun, ending at Oshkosh that would involved other big fly-ins and be easy for any media to promote. It would be so easy to go worldwide and make great press. I wish GAMI the best and hope material compatibility can be sorted out and that a winning formula can be developed. Alternatively, let's figure out which paints, hoses, etc. are not compatible and state that. I bet there would still be plenty of willing customers and the fleet will adapt. It did for ethanol. I never understood the marketing path GAMI used for G100UL and it appears this crisis is being mishandled. When it comes to safety or not taking risk with customers, a lot can be learned from Tylenol's 1982 recall.

Disclosure: I sell and install JPI equipment. Horis, sounds like you have an installer problem. I get it that you are frustrated, but I kinda roll my eyes at your multiple problems and your expectation that JPI help fix them. Install a GI-275 - you are not even going to speak with Garmin, they have a dealer network for this. And they use the same (or sometimes poorer quality transducers). 1) Fuel flow - these transducers are used in just about every engine monitor installation (JPI, EI, Garmin, Shadin). JPI sell a little 'simulator' for $35 that generates a signal and will test your wiring, the connections, the JPI display etc. Fuel flow 'comes and goes' - I'm not sure what this means? 2) CiES - these are rock solid if installed and calibrated correctly. Unfortunately that's where it starts going wrong. Not much you can get wrong with the installation other than having the wrong source for the transducer power, do not use the JPI 5V on the connector, you need to use aircraft power. Also it needs to be grounded at the transducer. 'Not working well' - well that's just too wide a description. Bad calibration? Not repeatable? Intermittent? Mooneys have 'complicated' fuel tank shapes and two transducers per tank. Plenty of opportunity for erratic indications, like no decrease for the first 15G, then it goes down at one rate until the top of take is 'uncovered' then a different rate when the sidewalls are in play, then another rate when the bottom of the tank is in play. Choose the calibration points incorrectly and you are going to get goofy results. 3) No fuel pressure - was it working in the beginning, now nothing? Bad connectors, broken wire, failed transducer? Easy for any technician. Multiple problems - overall grounding problem, or signs of a bad installation. You are not giving us much to work on, and if you are having problems with JPI, they are going to be less than helpful with limited information. Send me your data file and I'll see if I can help. Aerodon

No they don’t.

I'm glad we have people like @mluvara that take the time to do this analysis and videos. I wish we would have a few more to dissipate concerns about "it's just one person. The results were not replicated by anyone else" I wish I would have the time to do some tests myself.

I've long suspected that the reason GAMI went to an STC process was that they didn't want the level of scrutiny that would be required in PAFI, or perhaps knew that they wouldn't survive it. We're only just now seeing why that may be, and the growing number of unfortunate aircraft owners who have suffered for being essentially beta testers is not encouraging. I don't see how G100UL survives in the marketplace with the current amount of evidence of serious damage, and I suspect we've not seen the last of it. I am glad, however, that so far the damage has been limited to airplanes parked on the ground and there have been no injuries to operators or passengers. STCs do always carry more risk, and for any STC it is the responsibility of the installer to determine that it is compatible with existing systems, including other STCs that may have been installed. Sometimes this can be tricky.

I was asked for authorization from the FSDO on fuel and oil. I don't know what they took from other planes if any

I am in communication with the FSDO FAA, the samples collected have been analyzed and test results are under review. this was as of yesterday.

What’s your background to make that statement? Mine is being responsible for the care and feeding of 24 AH-64A aircraft in Korea, 3-6 Cav. Our mission was overwater as in repelling a possible seaborne attack from N Korea, as such we often flew over the Yellow Sea which is of course salt water at low level, so we were covered in salt spray, yes we washed the aircraft and flushed engines immediately on return. You won’t I believe ever see a Naval Apache, one was tested decades ago back as far as 1984, reason isn’t it’s capability, it’s because in its design that Hughes Helicopter put zero emphasis on corrosion prevention, they just had no experience in sea borne aircraft, the Magnesium gear boxes were the worst. We spent millions a year due to corrosion on the 3-6 Cav ones and to a lesser extent on the 1/3 Aviation ones stationed at Savannah Ga. Anyway several different preventative compounds were tested and Corrosion-X was easiest to apply, had the least negative effects and worked the best. As much as I believe my Army experience was good, it’s the Navy that literally wrote the book on Corrosion prevention, they have an advantage as their aircraft from the design phase are heavily influenced by corrosion prevention, but having fleets of aircraft tied down on Carriers and regularly soaked by sea water has to be the worst possible case. I believe the US Navy knows more about Corrosion in aircraft materials than anyone, by a large margin. They use Corrosion -X heavily and I’m sure are an important test bed, Corrosion-X is the only product readily available to us Civilians that meets the Navy spec. https://www.corrosionx.com/pages/aviation

Billy Kevin Westbrook here call me 539-292-0474

Steel collar is a must safety device whenever I put the airplane on jacks. One goes on the cherry picker's ram as well.

Hello Gents, I know this is an older post, but just if anyone is curious, N231LR is currently in our maintenance hangar getting an annual inspection for pre purchase. It had a belly in Late 2023, with repairs done in Feb of 2024. It's now at our shop with prospects of a new buyer. I had no idea about the planes history. I had Googled the N# looking for the accident report. Then I came across all the history. If anyone was curious. Cheers Gents

I had a nice chat with the FAA rep named at the bottom of the AD. I had sent an email to him and the AMOC email asking if there had been any approved AMOC requests yet so I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel if someone had already done the legwork. He got back to me on the same day. He said he's been fielding a lot of calls and they are aware of the supply issues. They are having internal discussions about what they can do if the parts do not become available. He recommended that I hold off on submitting an AMOC request to extend the timeline through additional inspections (say each 50 hours) until it gets closer to July as the FAA folks might come out with something themselves since they are aware of the issue. While it didn't give me the perverbial "warm fuzzy", my discussion with him and the response from AOPA lead me to believe there's not much more I can do for the time being, so I will try to let it rest and see where we end up. One surprise I've had was that I never received a response from GAMI. There are a bunch of posts on BT in 2023 and early 2024 where they were working on getting a clamp approved, but not much since. Not sure what happened with that effort, but it would be nice to have an additional supplier. I believe the spot welded clamps should be replaced ASAP, so I'd like to do that, but I don't think it requires ground the airplane in the short term until parts are available.

I have to disagree that it’s better. I’m going to call it miserable because even 10 years after it was sprayed in my bird it was wicking out between the seams of the wing skins. What a pain in the butt cleaning that after every flight. Sure puts a damper on it if you plan to paint the airplane. Plan on more cost to ensure it is not on the paintable surface. I much prefer ACF-50 as it’s not as likely to wick for years. Pick wisely as there’s bound to be some kind of issue you didn’t plan on having in regards to maintaining your bird.

Try contact Kevin Westbrook. He was working for Brittain for years and still helps people on the list. Good luck. @Kevin Westbrook

That’s a really big Bonanza

I've decided to try taking some videos of my flying again. Please don't mind the horrible editing, it's because I'm a horrible editor. In retrospect I think I would have been way better off not taking a time lapse of the outside, but taking a full video, then I could have synced up the inside and outside parts. Looking for tips here... What would be a better way to keep the video from being super-duper long (It's already way too long) yet still kind of show the whole flight? Maybe post a 'full flight in real time' video, and then a short video with just the highlights and have links to where the highlights are in the full video? Ugh. Don't know.

After landing I put the flap switch in up position and the flaps did not move and the circuit breaker popped. Thereafter, I noted that the breaker would pop when the master was turned on with the flap switch in up, takeoff, or down position (the airplane is a later model with the three position flap switch). I tried wiggling the flaps because some have said that got them working again, but to no avail. I'm not saying others are wrong, but the up/down limit switches ride on the acme screw barrel of the actuator which cannot be back driven due to the wheel and worm gearing of the actuator so I have a hard time seeing how wiggling the flaps can move the switches. Be that as it may, it did nothing for my problem. Removing the belly skin and inspecting things, I noticed that the actuator had overrun past the down limit and jammed the barrel. I disconnected the barrel and manually freed it and rotated it to the up position. But the breaker still popped. I disconnected the connector that feeds the motor and the breaker still popped indicating that the problem was not the motor. I disconnected the connector that goes to the up and down relays and the breaker didn't pop, so the wiring is good. Next I removed the down relay and reconnected the connectors and the breaker did not trip indicating that the short was in the relay. I took the down relay apart and found that the armature had become dislodged and that all three contacts (C, NO, NC) were stuck together creating a short circuit. The Magnacraft relay looks like a pretty flimsy mechanical design to me. I found some new/old stock online and ordered two. Hopefully this helps someone with a similar problem.

I guess GAMI has other priorities right now when their GAMI G100UL is under attack...

I wish ! I dropped a friend off at TS36 last year, what a cool place.

solder is a cruel factory trick. Nothing hurts quite like when it drops on your skin. The F are ring terminals. I think I calculated the much failed comms relay up under the panel is undersized for the King suite of Avionics. and most of them failed. My gear solenoid is similar to a 4 post solenoid off a N Model Ford tractor.

As you said, George replied pretty quickly to an email. They have designed a clamp for most applications, tested it, and “shared the test results” to the FAA. Unfortunately it’s not approved or in production yet. I don’t think we should count on it being ready to purchase by July.

I believe Great Lakes Aero Products (GLAP) makes the lenses for Mooney and these are also the lenses that LASAR and knots2u sell, so check the price and stock everywhere for the best deal. GLAP has a service where they will trim the new lenses to fit your existing lenses if you send them the existing lenses. Skip

Same experience here with PS Eng and Mark. I have some electronics background and thought it would be super simple, which it mostly was but there were problems I found with previous work and you always find something else that needs to be fixed along the way. Fortunately I had an IA, an Avionics Engineer, and some avionics veterans helping (I love our GA community). I ended up going with the 450C because of the few features that set it apart and the fact I could monitor my standby freq on the IFD440 which would may it easier for my IFR SOPs. I would have been just as happy with the 8000 because honestly who needs to listen to 3 or 4 freq at a time LOL. Besides I fly some very complex airplanes, it's nice to have the fast simple Mooney to change it up and relax. I questioned if I would go Garmin or PS but I'm glad I did because Mark is awesome!

The pictures used to support the AD seemed to be in the range of, that looks BAD.

Someone on BT said it was "Deferred another couple weeks..." Not sure any details or what was discussed in Court. Addendum: Mr. Niles said it was put off until Feb. 18 at the earliest, possibly Feb. 25. Edit: would be interesting if G100UL went through the PAFI testing process to better understand where it works well and where it fails. I don’t think we’re likely to “see” the data that was presented to the FAA for STC and given that Braly has only presented limited videos and labeled this hard data I don’t think that we will. Would G100UL have been able to get approval through PAFI? And if not, this certainly calls into question the approval process for alternative fuel STC’s.

The first part (top) came out of the mould (bottom) - not good enough. Have to move to resin infusion.

Putting W96 and KPTB on my near term visit list! But gonna be hard to top CJR. We got a Confederate Air Force, er, umm, Consolidated Air Force Wing here and all sorts of cool stuff (GlobeSwift comes to mind) and even some of them rare Mooneybirds.

Yankees start on the other side of that river, here in Alexandria, Robert E. Lee’s boyhood home is just down the street, and it’s no secret why all the war dead are buried in Lee’s (wife’s) front yard in Arlington. pretty good booze availability, but yeah special stuff you gotta get it somewhere else.

I’ll be moving to Virginia in a couple years and am hoping to get an idea of some good airports to base my Mooney. I was thinking the Petersburg or Chester area but really I’d just like to be within 2 hours driving of Williamsburg, but not right in Williamsburg (daughter will be going to college there, and she probably won’t want us right there…) so I’m pretty open to any ideas. Hopefully I can get a hangar before I move. Any ideas? For close but not on top of Williamsburg proximity W96 is the Ticket IMHO. My Cherokee Is Based at KPTB which is a decent airport and more/better hangars than W96. KFCI/Chester is busier and more expensive than either one with lots of corporate aviation in the mix. My daughter Graduated From W&M Law about 5 years ago and claimed She would never return to Dinwiddie County (She moved back about 2 years ago) I was born in and have lived in the Richmond area my entire Life and the southside of Richmond for about 18years. Cheers Stuart

Despite the luke warm response, this is promising in my opinion. At least they are aware and working on something. We now know that they didn't release the AD and moved on to better things.

Have another total wine store near me between Wilmington and Newark, does a huge business but not nearly as much as the total wine in Claymont near the Pa De border..tried to get some Blanton’s Gold scotch and Total wine made a special order they don’t carry it normally

You can bag them, but the fog will eventually get in there even if you let it sit overnight before removing the bags. Aim carefully? I basically just did wings and tail and didn’t go near the aileron servo. I didn’t do the fuselage…

This respost notification triggered terrible memories -thanks for nothing . Of note the pitch servo did evenually go back to working normally without my having to pull it. But I haven't fogged my plane since that date, and I probably should consider doing it again. I wonder what the safest most modern approach is.

The other factor is that if you have an autopilot, you don't want any of these products on your servos. So make sure whoever does it is aware of how to protect them.

popsicle sticks work well

My neighbor has a 56’ Bonanza with a E225 engine. It’s old and if the last overhaul was as resent as the 80’s I would be surprised. I had a IO-470 with a mid time factory overhaul in the late 90’s and spalled lifters. I think the source of the metal has changed. Even car manufactures are having lifter problems while my old boats and tractors just sit for extended time and still not fail me. I would blame it on the oil if it wasn’t for the old stuff not failing.

Try LP Aero or Great Lakes Plastics - both make lenses for various OEM's and STC holders. Send yours there so they can compare? Or use it as an excuse to get Aveo wingtips like I did. Also, 3M sell some 2 part plastic glues that are awesome. I have seen C172 wingtips 'welded' back together. Especially good if you grind a gap and bridge it, just like you would do with a metal weld. I suspect you could do a half decent repair, its not like you have to spot traffic? Aerodon

OK, I have to ask, how does that happen. I read preliminary and final FAA accident reports so I don’t make the same mistakes others may have. Even Mooney space is all about learning. I regularly help my mechanic do my annuals, and we place my aircraft on jacks that I made. We each work a main wing jack simultaneously calling out each pump so we stay in unison. After about four pumps on the wings, we move to the nose and lift it up (via cherry picker) to maintain a level condition. The main wing jacks are raised until a safety pin can be installed. Once the pin is installed the hydraulic jack is slow released to put load onto the pins and not the hydraulics. I have reviewed our procedure many times thru my head to try and think if we’re missing anything that might make it safer. If you know please share how the aircraft fell off the jacks.

For what it’s worth, the Smithsonian channel has a series called extreme airport Africa and in its newest episode they feature an M20R flying a mission to help with preserving rhinos. The episode is titled Flying Grandmas (not referring to the Mooney) anyway I just thought someone might be interested.

I love reading about this kind of troubleshooting -- way easier reading about it than actually having to do it.

I am just incredibly strong and push mine up a 30 degree incline the 50 yards to the hangar. It’s a little tricky when it snows but then I just wear ice skates. I really don’t understand kids today.

Wow. So many options for a simple part. Were it so for some of the more complicated things!

Radios and audio panel installed and tested. Getting closer!

buy the new Lightspeed Delta Zulu headset, it has a built in CO detector. Plus you protect your hearing with the latest and best ANR available. I know the CSOB in all of us hates the price up front, but remind yourself that it's less than a quarter of the price of hearing aids... https://www.sportys.com/lightspeed-delta-zulu-headset.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=&creative={AdId}&device=c&matchtype=&gclid=Cj0KCQiA-JacBhC0ARIsAIxybyMt_EBbPx0W0nqzDDVy-hNzinjUOq0DvS97uoIb-tclXd5HK7IPBT4aAu4jEALw_wcB

I was doing some window shopping and saw the plane mentioned on this thread is for sale: https://www.controller.com/listing/for-sale/202016847/1979-mooney-m20k-231-piston-single-aircraft If it is the same aircraft, I wonder if the current owners know it’s history? I didn’t see it mentioned in the listing.

Johns weather window lasted about a week or so... the first attempt, I believe, resulted in a come back next year, to get the job done... his trips defined Mooney efficiency... If doing a repeat, or a speedier 252 run... Precision fuel level sensors would be extra good... (Cies) extended range tanks are a natural for a super long distance Mooney...(Monroy) A really good engine monitor in place of the usual analog devices... (JPI, EI, or Insight ) GPS integrated with the fuel data... constantly letting you know fuel on board, and fuel required to destination.... cruising LOP in the FLs.... that's just an extra nice side benefit! A handful of other things would be nice... Mountain High O2 bits and pieces... ADSB in weather/wind at altitude info or XM... satelite receiver to get MS in the FLs... and WeatherSpork... Jolie’s friend does some interesting global flights, his plane is covered in sponsor decals.... Maybe something to be learned from his sponsor experience... Or doing a full speed Mooney run... get one good fuel sponsor... How far can you go with 130gallon tanks? Getting the sponsors on board requires some good story writing in publications like AOPA and other pilot magazines... MS has two writers of this quality and experience.... does that generate a few ideas? PP thoughts only, not a CFI... Best regards, -a-

Success! It was pretty much what bradp said above. The magneto overhaul shop found and fixed a break in the secondary coil (they did this for free, since they had just recently done the overhaul). They said that would cause poor spark at low RPMs for start, but would be ok at higher RPMs after starting. Now that's fixed and I also installed Tempest fine wire spark plugs. The plane started right up for my mechanic today. Oh, and we decided not to install the Slick Start. I'm looking forward to flying tomorrow!