Vance Harral

We had our jackscrew assembly rebuilt by LASAR a while back (long before the move to Prineville) due to excessive slop. In the course of discussions, Dan Reisland explained to us that there is something of an art to choosing the correct internal shims during the rebuild. Too few and you get more than allowed movement as specified in the maintenance manual. But too many causes the whole assembly to bind up, making it hard to turn the trim wheel, and causing immediate, excessive wear on the components. This applies to the whole system, not just the jackscrew assembly. Don't seek to make it overly tight. You want "some" slop, just not so much as to exceed limits. The best practical advice I ever got on this subject was from a mechanic who advised me to surreptitiously lift the tail of every Mooney I came across that I could lay hands on. The service manual is the gold standard, of course, but there is something to be said for comparing the slop in your airplane against what you find in others.

I'm in for $5K as shareholder #2, provided I can be a silent investor with no actual responsibilities such as decision making, attending meetings, or really doing any kind of work at all. Basically I want the same responsibility as when I buy a share of any other company on the open stock market. I delegate all "authority" my ownership buys me to @Yetti I am 100% serious about this. If Mooney owners were actually able to purchase the assets of Mooney, I'd contribute $5K just for the amusement value.

Something about this really doesn't add up. First, a bladder would have to have a pretty horrible wrinkle to change the dry point as referenced through the fill port by more than a half gallon or so. The wrinkle would have to be so bad that I'd think you would notice you couldn't actually fill the tank to the advertised capacity. Second, while the CIES senders have some nice technology that eliminates the resistive wiper arm of standard senders, they still use a pivoting float that would be "fooled" by anything that changes the physical level of the top of the fuel. As such, the problem you're hypothesizing wouldn't be fixed by CIES senders at all. Not saying you're imagining things, it just seems like you've had some very bad luck with your short body fuel tank experience, that I don't think is at all common.

This may be true with long range tanks, but fuel sticks work great in unmodified, vintage-era (M20J and before) airplanes. The point at which the fuel level drops below what can be wetted by a stick through the fill port is around 2-3 gallons, which is getting somewhat close to the unusable fuel volume anyway.

While the interface isn't user-friendly, you can get a list of all DPEs with Commercial Pilot Airplane Single Engine Land qualifications at https://designee.faa.gov/designeeLocator. Select Designee Type=DPE from the pull-down, click the Location Search radio button, select "Texas" from the state, and select DPE-CIRE-ASEL from the Authorizations, scroll down and click "Search". That'll give you a list of everyone in Texas who can give you the practical test. You'll have to ask them individually if they'll give a test in your M20E, but while there are a few who won't, most will... assuming you can get a hold of them (which is difficult everywhere, essentially all DPEs are continuously overwhelmed with cold call requests). You can search by City in addition to state, but unfortunately there's not an option for "anything within 100 miles of this city", only for a specific city: Dallas, Fort Worth, Wichita Falls, and so on. This is pretty impractical, hence the suggestion to search all of Texas.

This is generally sound reasoning, and is exactly why we're running an engine with 2500+ hours and 34 years since overhaul. But it's less attractive reasoning in an era of very long lead times on overhauls, and that's why we're pulling the trigger on ordering an overhauled engine now, even though we're still comfortable flying behind our current engine at the moment. The "wait until the engine tells you it really needs an overhaul" strategy assumes the cost of an overhaul is just dollars. But in the current market it is actually dollars plus many months of downtime. That makes a non-runout engine slightly more attractive, even though you can't know for sure that the non-runout will run longer.

This is not some sort of oddity, it's the normal state of the market. Yes, people sometimes sell an airplane they're flying regularly, because they want to upgrade or their mission is changing in the near future. But it's much more common to sell when the mission has already changed, the shine wears off, the finances can no longer support operations, or some combination of all those things. Regarding the Bonanza posted above, note that the G-35 model has the Continental E-225 engine and the magnesium ruddervators. This is not "bad", at least probably not worse than Mooney parts support, and I believe the Beech community has successfully executed their campaign to solve the magnesium tail feather problem. But the engine and the ruddervator concerns are part of the reason for the low price of that airplane relative to others with similar equipment and capability.

We are in the process of deciding to overhaul the runout IO-360 in our M20F, which is actually running fine, but has enough small issues after 2500 hours and 34 years that it's time. The general numbers on overhauling (not factory zero time) this engine at a well-known shop are $50-60K all-in cost (including paying our local mechanic to R&R the engine, new hoses, and other ancillary items not paid directly to the overhaul shop); and lead times at all the well-known overhaul shops running at least 6 months and in some cases over a year. You can get it done sooner/cheaper than this only if you stumble across an "interesting" deal, e.g. an engine already in a local shop for overhaul on which the owner has decided they no longer want the engine (we found one of these, but decided to pass on it). Based on recent market research, we think the $60K cost of an overhaul will increase the market value of our airplane by about $40K, so at first glance, engine overhaul is a money losing deal. We're going to do it anyway because we think the value of sentiment and the "devil we know" is worth that $20K delta, not to mention the travel/tax/opportunity costs of selling our airplane and buying something else. In your case, though, any airplane you buy would be new to you with potential unknown issues. As such, I'd say it's a bad idea to buy a runout and immediately try to get it overhauled, unless you just happen to find a specimen that's extraordinary in all other factors that matter. Installing a GFC500 is going to cost $14-20K all-in cost at any well-known shop, depending on whether you want trim and yaw damper servos. it will increase the value of the airplane by about half that amount on the open market. Regarding landing gear in M20F and older models, the difference in parts cost is just whether you ever need new lock blocks for the manual gear, or new internal gears for the Dukes/ITT actuators on the electric gear birds. Many Mooney owners go decades without needing either, in which case there is no difference. If you do need to replace these major components, the cost of lock blocks on the manual gear birds is less than the cost of internal gears in the electric actuators, but both can be a hassle to find legal replacements for, as documented elsewhere on this board. There is also a difference in inspection costs between manual vs. electric gear, due to Airworthiness directive 75-23-04 requiring inspection of the actuator internals per Mooney SB 109B at regular intervals. The additional work and cost of this inspection is relatively small compared to total operating costs, but it's a minor irritant for experienced owners, and a point of trepidation for new owners who must go through the learning curve of getting the inspection done safely. Having recently done a market analysis on our airplane for insurance valuation purposes, I agree with @gabez that $100K is light in the current market for exactly what you've specified as your dream airplane. But the good news is that I think you're not far off. I think you can find something for $100K involving only minor concessions, or you could pay slightly more than $100K for a really good match. All this is just my two cents, of course, and I could be wrong. Even if I'm not, the market moves around all the time, and there's always a chance you'll find a unicorn deal from a motivated seller.

One of the interesting things about dollars-per-hour metrics on engines is they flatten out at the ends of the spectrum. It costs $50-$60K today to overhaul an IO-360 (meaning an "all in" price including R&R, the typical replacement of fuel and oil lines, other stuff that happens while you're in there). But an airplane whose engine has less than 100 hours since overhaul generally won't command $60K of engine value even if you cut the number back by "immediate" depreciation. This is due to legitimate trepidation about infant mortality, and the fact that a lot of very-low-time engines are attached to airplanes that haven't flown much recently (such appears to be the case with the OP, only 50 hours in the last 2+ years). Similarly, a "runout" engine isn't worth $60K less than one with a fresh overhaul because any engine that's actually attached to the airframe and still developing power has some residual value despite being "runout". If you don't believe this at first, imagine making an offer on an airplane with a runout engine and being told last minute that the seller has removed the operating engine and will give you a core that's serviceable for overhaul instead, for the same sales price. Anyway, the point remains that while the curve flattens out at the end of the spectrum, $25-30 per engine hour is still a pretty good value adjustment for the significant majority of airplanes whose engines are in the middle of the use curve. No one knows when any given engine might need an overhaul, of course. But the subject here is sales value, not how much money you might have to have in the bank by what date when the engine starts talking to you. Those are, unfortunately, two largely independent topics.

Correct, apologies for the typo. I edited the original message.

While it's true anyone can list anything for any price, this is only a research problem for one-off rarities, and an M20E isn't that kind of airplane. There are no less than 14 of them for sale on Trade-a-Plane right now, and that's only one for-sale site. I don't really get these, "What's it worth" posts, and always wonder if it's a shill for something other than an actual sale. Determining value for anything of which there are a dozen or more posted seems trivial to me. Look at the ads for airworthy airplanes (in annual, flown recently, etc, all easy to determine). Discard the highest one or two as "of course it's for sale" foolishness; discard the lowest one or two as outliers that are likely hiding a surprise; that's still going to leave you with lots of samples. Make some rational adjustments for year model/TTAF/avionics/paint/interior compared to your airplane (doing so is not difficult - engine time on an IO-360 is worth about $30/hour, all the other stuff is worth about half the retail price). Find the average, price yours slightly high or slightly low in accordance with your personal preference on dollars vs. time to sell. Our partnership goes through this exercise every year for insurance valuation. I just did it this weekend: our M20F with decent avionics, decent interior, bad paint, and a runout engine is worth about $80K. The work takes about an hour, maybe two if I search really hard across multiple sites. The answers you get are significantly more useful than asking a bunch of randos on the internet who aren't actually selling their airplanes. This is all Jimmy and other brokers are doing to produce their valuation guides. To be fair, those folks are analyzing all makes & models rather than just one. But they're also not publishing new data every month, at least not in a manner you can subscribe to. Better to do your own market research, and it's just not that hard.

That streamlined design was installed on the last of the F models, including our 1976 M20F. That's likely sufficient "approved data" for any mechanic to be comfortable installing it on any F model.

Let's all remember that everyone has a finite budget. Some more than others, obviously, but the question here is not really whether a 2nd nav/comm would increase safety. Rather, it's whether the small risk reduction in doing so is the best use of safety dollars for this owner and his mission, given an already pretty-well-equipped airplane. The guy already said his mission is limited to "gentleman's IFR", which isn't significantly higher risk in the what-if department vs. a VFR-only pilot who might accidentally stumble into IMC. Yes, I suppose his GTN could lock up right as he enters a thin layer, at the same moment that layer quickly turns into widespread IFR for hundreds of miles. Maybe the GTN is actually electrically damaged, such that it doesn't respond to power cycling. But what is the risk of that compared with all the other risks he assumes? Engine failure? Loss of control? To put some numbers on it, looks like a used KX-155 is running $1500-$2000 on eBay, and let's hazard a guess it would be another $1000 to install. $2500-$3000 walk-away price for the increased safety of a 2nd nav/com. But I'd wager $1000 spent by the OP on 10-ish hours of training with a good CFII on equipment failures (including simulated failure of his only NAV/COM), as well as takeoffs and landings and unusual attitude recoveries, would reduce his risk a lot more than the additional equipment, for thousands of dollars less. That's a good tradeoff.

@Hank probably knows this, but just for others reading the thread... some carbureted aircraft don't have a primer systems that inject fuel directly into the cylinders. Including some Mooneys, and I'm guessing Hank's is one of them. Pumping the throttle to force the accelerator pump to spray atomized fuel up into the carburetor throat is the only way to prime the engine in these airplanes. But please be careful about dispensing "pump the throttle to prime" advice, even in carbureted aircraft. Most carbureted airplanes have updraft carbs (fuel/air path into the engine intake is opposite gravity), and some of them don't atomize the fuel all that well, especially when it's cold. In these aircraft, some of the fuel you shoot into the carburetor throat by pumping the throttle runs back down over the carburetor, into the engine cowl, onto the ground, etc. This is a fire hazard, and not just a theoretical one - a 182 at our flight school suffered significant damage in a carburetor fire caused by someone who wasn't very skilled getting the engine started, and managed to light off an engine compartment fire after excessive throttle pumping. It's definitely safer to use a primer vs. pumping the throttle, though the risk reduction is hard to quantify. If you must pump the throttle to get the engine started, one way to mitigate risk is to only pump the throttle while actually cranking the starter. With this method, the vacuum generated in the intake by the moving cylinders will draw more of the fuel droplets up into the engine, less of them will rain down on the ground. I'm aware this isn't the POH procedure, but it has been effective for me in a number of carbureted airplanes, and I think it's safer. The "hot start problem" in fuel injected engines is almost entirely caused by the the fuel injector lines being routed right over the cylinder heads, such that the fuel in them is baked and vaporized by the hot cylinders as soon as cooling air stops flowing over them, i.e. immediately after shutdown. Lycoming/Continental carbureted engines don't have this problem because the entire fuel/air intake system is below the hot cylinder heads, so there's really no comparison between carbuerted/fuel-injected with regard to hot starts. Indeed, carbureted engines are almost always blissfully easy to start when warm. For what it's worth, your engine would likely start with zero throttle pumps when warm, albeit after a few more blades than with pumping. Reduces the admittedly small risk of a carburetor fire, at the expense of more wear on your starter.

I wouldn't teach IFR in widespread low IMC in an aircraft with only one GTN-650 for navigation. My concerns would be a combination of lack of redundancy, and the additional distraction of using a single flip-flop to juggle three COM frequencies during the transition from initial to final approach (weather, ARTCC/TRACON, Tower/CTAF). Those concerns aren't show stoppers, but it would really detract from my enjoyment. That said, lot of people with instrument ratings only fly "gentleman's IFR", i.e. mostly VMC with an occasional climb/descent through a thin layer well above the ground. I'd fly with the OP in their airplane under those circumstances.