DXB

I was afraid to bring up the same question....but does anyone know? It is spontaneously fragmenting through gaps in the fabric that encases it. I may already be screwed after my recent unprotected clean up of bits of it lying around in the foot wells. It's a very nicely updated plane otherwise - I'll leave it in my will to a Mooniac TBD who has appropriate hazmat skills.

BUMPING THIS HIGHLY RELEVANT THREAD. While doing a thorough cleaning of my M20C interior over the weekend, I noted the decrepit condition of my 57 year old firewall blanket on the cockpit side: multiple holes, decrepit fiberglass shards leaking out from them. As @N201MKTurbo notes, this looks like a massive job to do properly. Has anyone come up with a satisfactory stopgap solution?

Yes - I have the original MP/FP gauge from my '68C - it looks just like this one and sits on a shelf in my office presently as a display item. I can only vouch that working in 2015, when I installed a JPI-900 and took it out. Maybe we could work out a swap? I feel kinda bad offering though. This was the single most horrible gauge in our old planes - iit brings a line containing fuel through the firewall to the gauge itself! I was very happy to get rid of it. Feel free to PM me...

I was about to say....please don't pay this. and encourage their business model. What are they gonna do? Tell the airport to put a $16 lien on a plane you no longer own?

This is wonderful to hear, and I am still hugely excited about this path for my 68C. It's my forever plane, and I have squeezed extra speed out of it by various means, making it a solid 150kt cruiser. I flew out to KOSH this year in loose formation with some Bonanza driver friends, who have been ribbing me ever since for having to slow down by 10kt on my behalf. I'm pretty sure this mod will be cheaper and healthier way of medicating my hurt feelings than drugs, or buying an A36

Hi @Sabremech - I just wanted to let you know that folks cravng your cowling mod skills for the C are still around!

This bill is progress. Call your senators and congressmen to support!! https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2025/june/26/bills-to-stop-ads-b-misuse-introduced-in-congress?fbclid=IwY2xjawMK06dleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHnnOSV5pS3uM9LHhixvFaLRjs5ZgI_E7gdVH9LYu0jUTX-Dci8HS-skGp8ps_aem_AkBJlEwvsOLt9AorOFeNwA

Very glad Foreflight is keeping up and am looking forward to checking it out. I was not enthusiastic about making the switch to Garmin Pilot.

Absolutely, but repeatedly resetting a tripped breaker in flight without knowing what tripped it is certainly tempting fate. https://planeandpilotmag.com/should-you-reset-a-circuit-breaker/

Yikes - in flight fire waiting to happen. Figure out where it is shorting.

+ Agree an LED is the way to go, but what you have is not normal and should be sorted regardless. Does turning on your pitot heat do the same? It should be a comparably large electical load I think? Yes or no might help trouble shoot where the issue is. I'll leave it to the folks with more expertise on how electrons move about to figure this one out

I know this plane - immaculate airframe, well cared for, regularly flown, basic IFR panel with with 430 and basic autopilot.

It's outta control, today due to @vinni68

The implementation of the Trutrak / Aerocruze 100 for Mooney has been a ongoing clusterf*ck for several years now. It's painful to watch. Everything BK touches turns to sh*t. It would be great if the entire Mooney community wrote off BK and turned their attention to the Trio folks to encourage them to finish their STC. They seemed committed to doing so by end of this year when I spoke to them at KOSH - not that I put much faith in that outcome.

Interesting - thanks for clarifying. I suppose there also could be a slight timing advance if the Surefly discharges early due to a narrow gap, but the electronics probably compensate automatically for this? I kinda hope the next mag setup I put in after the 2400 hr life of my left Surefly is over is like the (currently still experimental) Emag on both sides. They draw ship's power for stronger spark but also have an internal alternator to make them autonomous if power is lost. I noted at KOSH that they were bought by Hartzell a couple months ago - maybe not totally a good thing but they sounded committed to pushing the STC forward more quickly.

I'm doing my first spark plug maintenance at 100 hours after install of a new set of Tempest UREM37BY spark plugs. They were installed at overhaul of my O-360-A1D without altering the gap set by the manufacturer (I think ~0.018?) to account for my Surefly SIM4N on the left side. I think Surefly recommends a gap of 0.022 to 0.035, favoring the high end of the range - not sure why, I think maybe because the longer duration spark otherwise causes excess wear? By contrast, the Bendix mag I have on the right side generally favors a 0.015-0.019 spark plug gap. My engine has run great for the first 100 hours SMOH with this setup, and just now there's starting to be slight roughness and occasional misses on the right mag at runup (without engine monitor anomalies). I think this makes sense since I see some of the plugs have worn past a 0.019 gap. Predictably there's a bit more wear on the plugs driven by the Surefly given the longer duration spark. My question is: What would you do for plug rotation and gapping in this situation?? I can find no official guidance on this.. The standard rotation scheme will keep the Surefly and Bendix plugs separate throughout their life, which I think is desirable, except maybe the Surefly plugs will wear out faster leading to earlier plug replacement. However this keeps gapping much simpler - just let the Surefly plugs continue to wear into their optimal range while continuing to narrow the gap on the Bendix plugs as needed. Would anyone do anything different here? My ignition setup: 1 2 3 4 TOP Bendix Surefly Bendix Surefly BOTTOM Surefly Bendix Surefly Bendix

Some thoughts: (1) Your Mooney is an awesome instrument platform (2) Finding vintage planes with fully modern avionics is tough, making your plane an excellent blank slate on which to build an IFR panel that will serve you for a decade or much more after the investment up front (3) You will find a CFII to train you in it. Again it is a great instrument platform. 10 years ago, I did an extensive update on my panel before instrument training. It was a great decision in retrospect. Though I don't have time to stay proficient in multiple planes, I remain very comfortable flying hard IMC in that plane.

+1 that the FAA, to their credit, does follow through on the registration data removal request . In my case it took a couple of weeks. Thanks again to @shawnd for posting how to navigate the website to submit the request! For all the folks who consider an LLC simply to hide their info (which can be circumvented with a little effort), this seems like a MUCH better solution. I submitted a request to https://www.aviationdb.com/ that they update their online information to reflect the public FAA information for my tail number, but I will be surprised if they do anything - anyone else have success on that front? Nevertheless, this is progress...

Just use them before you hit the starter, then turn off at night if other planes are operating nearby. And you'll be glad you went LED all around! Brighter, minimal battery load, last forever so you'll never be caught with them inop when you want to fly. I was happy to junk my belly light after the bulb blew at an inopportune time, and bulb replacement was $40+.

To be clear, I agree taxiing around with strobes on at night when other planes are operating is annoying. However, I always start up on the ramp with LED strobes on - the attention divert at that moment is appropriate, day or night . They are far more more effective than an old coffee grinder - particularly at the belly location on Mooneys, whose low stance makes it even less effective.

unnecessary, probably a waste of money, unless you don't meet minumum legal lighting requirements https://flywat.com/pages/aircraft-lighting-regulations Low draw LEDs let you keep strobe and nav light switches on all the time, even before startup. The belly beacon adds nothing here. I had my factory beacon on the belly removed on my '68 and the hole sealed when I went all LED including stobes several years ago.

I too am a member of this faux alternator failure club. Luckily mine happened a bit closer to home.

Terrible tragedy for the Kerrville community though the factory sounds intact.

Your airframe has a basically an unlimited life if cared for. It sounds like the utilty of this airframe is might be limited by the avgas situation in belgium. An SR22T has advantages and disadvantages over a Bravo - but will never rival a Mooney in cool factor or fun factor.

Hard to know Vector's valuation since private but they are a small company, and their revenue seems to be in the 1-10million range. It's not certain they will have much power at the moment, but they are growing now - time to stomp them out. GA does have a modicum of power, and so the political sausage machine might get something like this passed eventually.