toto

The “zip tie” comment was meant to be tongue in cheek, but it does seem like an unfortunate design for an emergency extension system. I’m mostly eating popcorn in this thread - totally agree that NBS failures aren’t the reason people land Mooneys gear-up, and gear-up landings rarely hurt more than the pilot’s pride, in any case..

Drat, okay. Thanks - I’m pretty clueless when it comes to M20Ts…

I seriously want someone who really understands this stuff to figure out where to put a zip tie so the manual extension cable still works after the spring breaks. Gear actuators aren’t infallible, but most RG planes have an emergency extension system that doesn’t have a single point of failure with the primary. If someone can noodle an STC that eliminates the single point of failure, we’ll stop stressing about the spring.

Out of curiosity, did you have to get a field approval for the second alternator? I didn’t remember this from your avionics thread. Is it a B&C or something else? I keep wanting to put a backup alternator on my accessory pad, but I’ve been hesitant to go down the field approval road.

Do you know offhand what it costs for an overhaul at Lasar? I.e., you mail them your actuator and they mail it back? I always had the sense that this was pretty inexpensive and a pretty quick turnaround, but I’ve never had my actuator out of the plane, so no idea really.

I actually wondered whether that's an angle for Lasar. You can get your actuator overhauled at Lasar for $3k (including the spring) or you can buy the spring for $3k and have it overhauled elsewhere - your choice.

With all the hemming and hawing over the NBS, I think the real business opportunity here is a manual extension that doesn’t break when the NBS breaks. I’ll buy that STC.

I meant that the springs fail more often when you put the handle up (so the gear are stuck down if the spring breaks).

Just so everyone knows what we’re talking about … the no-back clutch spring is this little tiny thing. (Photo cropped from an earlier thread showing a used NBS for sale on eBay.) Don Kaye has a bunch of other photos and info on his site: https://donkaye.com/infamous-1500-back-spring

There are many many threads on MS discussing the no-back spring. Basically, there’s a very small number of confirmed failures that resulted in gear-up landings, and the failures are mostly attributed to manufacturing defects in the springs themselves. The original bad batch was installed as original equipment from the factory, and at least one aircraft has had a failure in a replacement spring. The collective wisdom here I think is that your NBS is very unlikely to fail, and it’s probably low on the list of reasons Mooneys land gear-up. Don Maxwell has been paraphrased here a number of times saying that they can tell at annual if a spring is chattering during gear swing tests and that you’ll know well before it fails. And anecdotally, they seem to fail more often on retraction than extension (so you’re stuck with gear down, not with gear up).

I thought that they were just buying a minimum quantity of the same old part through Mooney Intl? They aren't actually manufacturing these.

I honestly think they've overshot on this one. There are many out there, myself included, who were very much on the fence about whether the infant mortality unknowns of a replacement spring were better than the unknowns of an otherwise healthy spring with a lot of hours on it. And that was when the spring was selling for an eye-watering $1000 per unit. But at $3000 per unit, those of us who were already on the fence probably have our decision made easier.

Cross link to the other thread https://mooneyspace.com/topic/49784-lasar-taking-deposits-on-no-back-spring-kits/

Cross link to the LASAR post .. https://mooneyspace.com/topic/49787-no-back-clutch-spring-m20-282-0001-eaton-kit-update-good-news/

Whoa

I think that's exactly what they did with the Missile MooneyMissileConversion.pdf

Yeah, I tried to self-correct before suffering the indignity of a reply

ETA: What I just asked makes zero sense, since LASAR is a MSC. Just ignore me

This has been much speculated on MS, but the running theory is that there was some minor beef-up of the landing gear to support the extra weight, and that beef-up happened from a specific serial number forward.

Actually, it’s interesting how these things are related. Almost anywhere I go, I have people who walk up and go “I heard those things are really fast.” So the visual appeal is inextricably linked to its performance

Best of both. I bought a Mooney because I had a lot of good experience with four-cylinder Lycomings, and no one does more with a four-cylinder Lycoming than Mooney.

This is similar to the Ultra seat design Photo from General Aviation News at https://generalaviationnews.com/2016/02/11/mooney-rolls-out-redesigned-acclaim/

I'm going to claim victory on the "flight deck" thing

Could be more Autonomi retrofit options. Very limited at the moment … and I think you’d need auto throttles and auto braking. But still..

There’s absolutely no way to get an extra 1.2” diagonal in my panel - unless they were to lose the bezel completely. I honestly don’t think you could fit a 12” display without a lot of surgery.