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During installation of the trim servo, the shaft between the front and rear trim gearboxes has to be disconnected in the tail. If the shaft is rotated while disconnected, it causes this problem. The trim system needs to be re-rigged per the Service Manual. BTW, the easiest way to avoid this is to run the trim all the way to one of the stops before disconnecting the shaft and make sure its all the way at the same stop before reconnecting. The stops are at the front gearbox.

The new engine is in, prop and exhaust installed. Just hooking up the details. We have a new mechanic at Freeport, IL now who is familiar with Mooneys. Progress moving much faster now.

Sure is a way to get my blood boiling again! Funny how Eric pointed out other groups doing exactly this and it still being brought up at IA seminars as the perfect way to stay within the regulations and keep the old birds flying. David

This also seemed to have the effect of making many people leery/suspicious/hesitant about the Owner Produced Parts process, which I suspect is what Lasar wanted to accomplish. OPP is one of the best and most effective escape routes that the FAA gives us to be able to continue to maintain aging airplanes with limited support. High cost and long lead times are two examples that the FAA often gives in their presentations as reasons to use OPP. OPP is often also not inexpensive or quick, but it does give an owner options. Many different vintage aircraft owner groups have successfully and repeatedly done exactly what was attempted here with the lock blocks, and they weren't stifled by vendors complaining to the FAA. What happened here seemed to me to be a notable exception, and it didn't sit well with many of us.

Although they are ball bearings, I put a drop of 3 in 1 oil on all the pivot bearings. It will loosen them up.

There was a Bonanza that crashed after a GFC500 A/P install - on a test flight with the technician - because of an incorrectly reinstalled trim system. There was another Beech where the avionics shop made swiss cheese out of the main spar web - leading to a lawsuit. @dc_brasil pictures and description above are troubling - no need to remove too much, but it looks like the elevator spring was not installed correctly. @unicom - the service manual is pretty good at describing the adjustment of the stops, adjustment of the trim indicator, and required horizontal stabilator. @pt20J has got the right solution - if you mark everything before you take it apart and put it back together again the same way you should have no issues. You have to 'split' the torque tube behind the avionics tray to get the new trim gear on the shaft. My local avionics guy subs the servo installation out to a properly qualified maintenance / structures shop. You need quite a high avionics installation to justify a decent in-house solution. Aerodon

Prop tips curl forward if the engine was making power on impact; rearward if windmilling. If the prop is stopped, a blade will bend closer towards the hub with less curl at the tip and blades will have asymmetric damage.

Is that known information or speculation? That is kind of petty and vindictive (Lasar doing that, not you calling attention to it…),but was it the current owners?

I'm worried about all of the PMA & STC parts and repair/refurbish options that used to be available with the original LASAR that are now NLA. If they could not maintain that low-hanging fruit, I'm really concerned how they're going to maintain the PC in Kerrville.

Having seen the results of bent blades when a prop is not turning and comparing the picture to that of the accident airplane's prop, the pictures look similar. I've also seen pictures of props after gear up landings when the prop had been spinning. They have curled blade tips. Therefore, it appears to me that the prop wasn't spinning in the accident airplane implying the engine wasn't running. Awaiting the results of the NTSB investigation...

Remember when we used to fly, to simply get away from the world for a little while?

If your speed brakes are not operating you might watch this video to see if they can be easily fixed without the $4K overhaul that Precise Flight offers.

LASAR was acquired by the current owners in 2017. This ugly event occurred in 2021-2022. The former owners, the Loewen’s were long,long gone.

The best way to do this would be note while flying where the throttle knob is at 12". Possibly measure it several times with a ruler so you know. Then when back on the ground set the throttle to the same position. Then adjust the microswitch by loosening the two pretty small nuts and moving it back and forth.

It could be as easy as realigning the indicators. Or may need to put the linkages back to where they were before the install. An easy check would be to run flaps and trim end to end and see if they bottom out on either side.

This has happened to me! When the shop installs the pitch and pitch trim servos they have to disconnect the pivoting empennage. I don't know the exact procedure, but I infer that when they connect it again, if they haven't properly marked all the previous positions of each connection, there is a risk they will not return the linckages to the exact position they were before. Then, they will need to redo all tail flight control rigging. In my case, the first test flight had a very pronounced nose down tendency and I had to use almost full nose-up trim to land the plane. After the flight I noticed hw much the elevator was drooping down and compared it to older pictures. I live in Brazil, where Mooneys are rare birds, so the shop that installed my GFC500 had only previously worked on one Mooney ever. They had to get my regular Mooney A&P to travel there and redo all tail connections and F/CTL rigging. This is the elevator after the test flight: And this was the elevator before installation: Hope it helps.

More AP testing today, working the GPSS gain setting. A bit windy today so will do a flight tomorrow night again. So far, very pleased with the new setup… -Don

I will make it easy for everyone. Here is the FAA Unapproved Parts Notification (UPN). UPN 2022-S20210727018 In November 2022, the FAA issued an Unapproved Parts Notification (UPN) specifically for Mooney landing gear lock blocks produced as Owner Produced Parts (OPP). It shat upon the people that help produce them and really screwed the Mooney owners that installed them. The FAA immediately rendered those planes "not airworthy". The OPP up and down lock blocks were superior products but immediately became scrap. Notice the last sentence - they really want to rat out those involved in producing this superior part. LASAR got their way and protected their monopoly. The MS'er that was getting them machined has not been on MS for a year. Has "transparent" LASAR fessed up? "If these parts are found in existing inventory or installed in an FAA type-certificated aircraft, the FAA recommends that they be quarantined to prevent installation or use until a determination can be made regarding their eligibility for installation, or replaced with FAA-approved parts. FURTHER INFORMATION You may obtain further information concerning this investigation from the FAA Manufacturing Inspection District Office (MIDO) Section below. In addition to the above recommendations, the FAA would appreciate any information concerning the discovery of the above referenced parts from any source, the means used to identify the source, and the actions taken to remove the parts from the aircraft and/or parts inventories. "

You should probably fly an av-30 before buying one. A couple people have them (or av-20) as backups and said they are ok, but a little hokey. @PT20J has one…

I guess it depends on whether you want a remote or accessory case mounted filter. I have the Donaldson adapter. Donaldson Spin On Oil Filter Adapter - 204418-156 | Aircraft Spruce ® Pros: Does not further clutter the firewall. Should not need new hoses. Inexpensive Cons: Challenging to change the filter with no spills. Further clutters an already tight area of the engine.

I got finished reading all of Mr Baber's posts in his recent thread on here regarding the prior engine issue. He sounds like a thoughtful and humble guy who handled the event carefully and intelligently. The sediment in the left tank sounded like the culprit, the approach to addressing it seemed fairly meticulous. It's very sad his efforts and those of his A&P weren't enough to keep him safe. What an awful tragedy. RIP Also f*ck the folks who immediately want to point the finger at him without knowing sh*t.

While 3D print file is great for other people.... For one off, I would have hit the nearest plastic shop for a scrap of 3/16" plastic. A Dremel and 15 minutes would have one.

The biggest risk going forward in terms of difficult factory-only parts IMO would be control surface skins to fix hangar rash and hail. They are stamped out using the factory dies and presses. Less often would be wing or fuselage skins. Fiberglass (or carbon) cowls can be fixed in the field with a skilled technician, although I believe the factory missed a tremendous opportunity to sell upgraded composite cowls to J & K owners, and perhaps M/R/S owners as well using their molds. Beyond that are the unobtanium ducts and landing gear bits that they don't make themselves anyway. Eventually I would expect a new vendor to reverse-engineer critical parts and sell them to us without the legacy burden of the Mooney company. It will be sad, but the market will react. (See the recent V-tail skin saga in the Beech world) I have said before that the current value in the Kerrville operation/factory space is the Production Certificate that enables serial production of airworthy parts, which includes the policies & procedures and Quality system. Doubly-so in a low-cost & biz-friendly area of the US! If I were running Mooney, I would have been aggressively pursuing 3rd party fabrication contracts for aerospace production and even adding capability that hasn't been used for Mooney production if it made sense to make money. It is far easier to add capability under an existing PC than it is to start from scratch. UAVs have been in production for long enough that I wish Mooney would've approached those major manufacturers to get on board, and the upcoming eVTOL/UAM/etc markets are going nuts with all kinds of ridiculous investments and Mooney seems to have missed that wave as well. IMO, manufacturing parts & assemblies for either or both of those markets could have kept the factory humming and the lights on, and that would in turn have allowed the occasional run of Mooney parts now and then when needed. If I were really dreaming, perhaps some of those 3rd party lines could justify the expense of automated production machines that could eventually be ported over to Mooney production, but that is a very, very long shot. It will never make sense to automate any of the M20 line just on the demand of that (mostly obsolete) airframe, nor will it make sense to off-shore production either. I don't see how a very under-capitalized LASAR can effectively do anything with the factory in Kerrville when they cannot even get their own STC/PMA parts back in production after moving to Oregon. Collecting a little bit of money from the fleet in advance is unlikely to move the needle much on that front, I'm afraid.

I’m hoping we will be getting more details and the term and conditions about the program soon. What may be missing here is some context. Lasar took over the Mooney Factory Parts program in July. That’s been documented here in other forums. Mooney is basically bankrupt again and was within weeks of shutting down in July. Laser stepped forward and is covering the Kerrville expenses including payroll for the Mooney employees. Laser put this program together to raise needed capital to fund the purchase of Mooney in its entirety, to produce inventory for Mooney airplanes and to modernize the Kerrville facility with equipment that will hopefully help contain parts costs. It’s a huge undertaking. The alternative is Mooney is gone. I’d fairly certain if Mooney disappears the value of every one of our airframes diminishes, insurance cost increases, if it’s even offered, and the likelihood of our planes being AOG increases significantly. I have seen enough of the Mooney finances to know the options are extremely limited. As I understand it, current ownership has thrown in the towel and are done funding Mooney. I, other than being a Mooney owner, have zero stake in Lasar or Mooney. I, like many others want to be part of a sustainable solution to the financial issues that have plagued Mooney for most of its existence. I’m hopeful Brett and his team at Lasar will be responding to the issues in this thread. In the meantime I looking forward to suggestions to move Mooney on to the next chapter.”

In any single-engine airplane with a fuel selector with a single tank selected, learn to make it a reflex, without even thinking, that if the engine quits or has a very significant stumble, just switch tanks and turn the boost pump on. It doesn't matter how much fuel is in the selected tank, just do it. Fuel level is only one of many conditions that have to be sufficient in a tank to make the engine work, and if it quit, even if there's fuel, it could have become clogged, had a big slug of water dislodge from a rib, had a big chunk of contamination break loose and become an issue, or hit some other contamination in that tank that just made it to that pick up, plus a number of other potential issues. Switching tanks removes any potential condition associated with that particular tank from being an issue. Don't even think about it, just switch tanks and turn the boost pump on. Make it a reflex. It's not hard to learn to do, but you need to make an effort to do it. If your fuel selector isn't super easy for you to manipulate, practice doing so quickly so that you get muscle memory for that task.

Both the gascolator screen and the servo screen need to be removed and inspected for debris. You’re way upstream of where you need to be until you verify that the fuel system has not been contaminated.

http://www.grummanpilotsassociation.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/SSP-885-1-Lyc-Oil-Filter-Installation-Manual.pdf Hope this helps. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk