markfoster7700

Yes, there is a very small wire that runs through the baffle at the top/aft of the engine. It is likely broken. Find it, patch it, and you are back in business. Very simple fix, just have to find the wire. Mark

Hi Mark, I had an O3 with TKS and I had a LOT of trouble with my system at one point, so I now consider myself an "amateur/expert" with the system. I spent many days with the boys at CAV Aero troubleshooting, etc. The issues I had have nothing directly to do with your question, but because of my issues, I learned a lot about how the system is supposed to work (and does work, when everything is actually working). The short answer to your question is, what you were seeing is completely normal. You stated that you were running the system in the "Normal" mode, and then you saw the ice as depicted in your pics. I would say two things to this: One, you were apparently in icing conditions that were just a little bit more than "Normal" mode could handle as far as keeping ice from forming at all. And two, the system is designed to actually ALLOW some amount of ice to accumulate, and then let aerodynamic forces peel off the build-up of ice. So the irony is, what you really needed was some more ice! :-) I would be willing to bet you that if you continued to accumulate ice with the system right where you had it (i.e. "Normal") and just allowed the ice to build up more, it would have peeled off with no trouble. You could also try going to the "De-ice" or "Max" mode, and see if that wouldn't clear things faster. It usually does unless you're in really bad icing conditions. I'm not advocating that you should cruise in icing conditions just to see if I am correct or not. I'm just telling you my experience both personally in the plane as well as my discussions with CAV. Bottom line is, the amount of ice that you were showing there is trivial (as icing goes), but not so much so that you should just cruise in it. Hope that helps, (another) Mark

Oh, and how could I forget.....we also have an airline pilot/mechanic/Mooney-owner (C model) on the field. I can look him up for you if you would like. (Jeff at the airport probably already has -- could be the mechanic that he is getting for you.)

Ray, I used to be based at Y47 and I owned an Ovation 3. I still have my hangar there and was just out there yesterday and saw your 231 on the ramp. I'm with the master relay/solenoid group, but Tim (the mechanic who will likely be working on your plane) will figure it out for you. If I can be of any assistance (ground transport, tools, parts runner, anything), please do not hesitate to contact me directly. Cell phone is 248-981-3536. Mark Foster I am available all day, live 6 miles from the airport, and am happy to assist a fellow pilot who is AOG. I've had (more than) my fair share of AOG situations with little to no assistance (not with my Mooney, BTW. :-) ). Call or text if I can help.

I don't have the wiring diagram handy, but I can tell you exactly where your problem is (most likely). The wimpy wire and its equally wimpy connector are at the top center of your engine compartment at the back of the engine. The main baffle that separates the engine from the firewall has a bundle of connections/wires that go through that baffle. You will discover that the wire that feeds your MFD is disconnected probably at that connector or darned close to it.

You just picked up this Ovation when you could have had mine? :-) What type of traffic do you have? Only TIS, or something else?

I can concur with the numbers the others are posting. I can also tell you that I have a great deal for you on an O3 if you are interested. I am selling mine and I am somewhat motivated at the moment. Contact me directly (and soon) if you think you might be interested.

Vne if they are the same as mine.

Jeff, You will never hurt anything by sliding every LRU you have out and back in. I don't know what serial number you have, so I don't know for sure if your transponder is clearly marked or not. I did have one "red X" failure that was the main connector on the G1000 interface (not an LRU, but in the same bay in the back), and the solution to that was to spray contact cleaner on the connectors and place a zip-tie around the unit to ensure that the connector could not back off of its connection. In general, there is really no harm, and mostly only good, from disconnecting and reconnecting electrical connections. Mark

Try sliding the LRU out and sliding it back in. You can even spray some contact cleaner on the connections if you want. This action has been the cure for every red X that I have ever had. It is now just routine maintenance for me, about once every 6 months seems to do the job.

That seems like an outrageous price for this product, even for an Ovation 3 owner (which I am). Why so expensive? How much is a visor without any silk screening on it?

Yes, this is not just a case of "crappy Continental" cylinders. I flew a Debonair IO-470-N. I went through 3 engines, all to TBO and well beyond TBO and never had a cylinder off of the plane, and never had any compression test less than 65/80 -- most were in the 70's for the life of the engine. I now fly an Ovation 3 that I bought new in 2008 and have flown it for 1400+ hours with no removal of any cylinders and compressions all in the upper 60's to mid 70's. It has a lot more to do with how often you fly and at what power settings than whether is is a Continental or a Lycoming. Having said that, this situation was due to the fact that the Acclaim engine started out life with the crank case breather venting into the exhaust, and thus coking up the cylinders from the backside. This caused them to need to be topped at about 400 hours. I understand that there is now a mod for an air/oil separator that fixes the problem. Sorry that I don't have a link handy.

I did this once very early on in the ownership of my Ovation 3. I heard through some posts in the MAPA forum that I may have damaged a roll pin in the gear motor shaft or something to that effect. But when I brought the subject up to Don Maxwell, he shrugged it off as a non-issue. If he doesn't think it is a problem, I would tend to think that it is not a problem. We did, however, put the plane up on jacks and swing the gear both manually and using the motor just to be sure that there were no bad noises or anything. I have had the plane 6.5 years now, and never had an issue with the gear.

Bob, I am working in Milwaukee and Chicago this week, but after this week I am open. I live in Michigan, but both Elmhurst, Illinois and Cleveland are not very far from me. If you need a shuttle service to/from your plane, let me know. I would be happy to give you a ride.

Those power supplies (and others) will work, but just an FYI -- I know from experience (and from looking at my plane's paperwork after the fact) that you must be on Battery #1 using the external power plug for it to work. I had to have my PFD replaced (under warranty, thank God), and the avionics shop that did the work had the external power unit plugged in and turned on, but they had Battery #2 selected and proceeded to run that battery down to less than nothing.

Thanks Philiplane. I just ordered another 55-gallon drum. I use at least one drum per season, and I run the system a minimum of once per week. I fly essentially every week, and I run the system every time I fly. I have some of the 2.5-gallon buckets so that I can take some extra with me because so few FBOs actually have the stuff, and if they do, they charge through the nose for it. I bought this plane specifically because it was FIKI, and it kills me (hopefully not literally) that I cannot trust it to work at this point. It worked today. We will see if it works on Monday.

Thanks guys, I am fully aware of the varying viscosity of the fluid. We have tested it in all temperature ranges. I have had the panels purged many, many times. I probably know the system and how it is "supposed" to function better than most by this time. I think that the most plausible explanation is leaks and/or fluid quality. The irony is that once the temp gets below -15C, I get the high pressure light, but I get flow (in the non-problem areas). When it is warm, I get good flow except in the problem areas. When we purge the panels, I get good flow for a flight or two, then it goes bad again, but it is not always the same panels that are bad, though almost always it is the right wing and the horizontal stabilizers that are the most likely to fail. Not sure how the B747 factoid helps, and not sure why a plane with turbine engines would ever need TKS, but who knows? :-) Mark

I will be delving into the potential causes more deeply soon. Obviously there has not been anything obvious, or we would have fixed it a long time ago. I need to order more fluid as I am currently on my last 1/2-tank in the plane, and the 55-gallon drum is dry. Anyone know the place with the best deal on fluid? I've purchased from Davis, Kil-frost, and one other one that escapes me now. My first drum cost me $495. The second one $595, and the last one was just under $700. I got two "free" ones from CAV for various things I did for them, like allowing them to use my plane as their display plane at the AOPA summit in California. Tom (Yooper), I am based at Y47, New Hudson, just north of ARB. Let me know if you are passing by. I'll let you know if I get into IMT. I was there working for a company about a dozen years ago, but haven't been back since.

All, Thank you very much for your suggestions. It seems that the consensus is pointing at potential leaks and quality of fluid. I don't believe that it could be contamination (debris) in the lines because all the panels flow just fine when purged and if one panel of the other had debris, then it would always be the same panel that wouldn't flow. I have only ever purchased the fluid in 55-gallon drums, except for a few times in the 2.5 gallon jugs (Kil-frost) directly from CAV. I find it so hard to believe since CAV supposedly replaced every single seal more than once in this whole ordeal, but then again, they may have caused some while attempting to fix some. At one point we did find a leak at the high pressure switch, which was replaced (at great expense). So, of course I will take this maintenance task on myself now. I have done the vast majority of my own maintenance over my 27 years of airplane ownership -- in conjunction with my IA, of course. I am a mechanical engineer, and I know which way to turn a nut on a bolt (even the left-handed ones), and I can safety-wire. So I believe that I am qualified to troubleshoot this problem, especially with the assistance from all the good folks on this forum. My real peeve with the whole thing is that I felt like I had reached a place in my life where I could afford to pay the most knowledgeable people (those who designed and built the system) to fix it for me. It is maddening and frustrating to hear from them (repeatedly), that I am just S.O.L. from their perspective. They have just thrown in the towel and said (essentially), "Your problem now." Incidentally, I ran the system today before leaving KC. I had no flow on the left stab outboard 2 feet, no flow on the right stab outboard 6 inches, and no flow on the right wing outboard 1 foot. I called the CAV mechanic and complained and pleaded for some direction/assistance/anything. He stated again that there is nothing that he could think of that could help me. He again blamed the lack of flow on the higher temperatures (it was about 72) and the fact that I was only on battery power. I took off for home, and purposefully flew into icing conditions (knowing that it was above freezing below). The system seemed to "wake up" on the right wing, so both wings kept up with it fairly well. the tail did not clear the ice where it was not flowing, but after about 15 minutes, it was flowing further outboard than before. It never did clear off the left stab outboard 1 foot until I was out of the icing conditions and was descending. But all in all, it did better than I expected it to. I have a trip planned to the west coast in May, and I sure would like to have more confidence in the system. I will be checking things out over the next couple weeks as schedule allows. To assist me further, can you all tell me how much fluid you normally go through before replacing the filter? Also, do you ever get the "high pressure" indication (that will not extinguish with a reset) when operating in very cold temps, say -16 to -25C? And finally, how wet is your aft belly panel compartment after using the system? I always have oodles of fluid inside that compartment. The boys at CAV have always told me from day 1 that Mooneys "just do that" because of the opening at the root of the flaps. Yooper, I graduated from MTU, and was just there for Winter Carnival this year with my three college roommates. There was no hangar space, so I parked on the ramp and wrapped my plane (the wings and tail) in plastic wrap. It worked like a charm! :-) The only problem was that I neglected to wrap the prop and the body, so we still had to knock a bunch of ice off before we could leave. Next time, the whole plane gets wrapped. 1000 feet of "shipping" wrap for $20 from Lowes. :-) Thanks all! Mark

Hello fellow Mooniacs. I am brand new to this forum, though I have been active on the MAPA list for some time now. I have a 2008 M20R Ovation 3. Up until last Oshkosh, it was the 3rd-to-the-last (My wife tells me, the "anti penultimate") plane to roll off the factory floor. I must preface this rant with the fact that I am extremely upset right now, and fit to be tied. So please excuse the length of this post and the "tone" of it. I have thus far refrained from posting in a public forum as a courtesy to CAV to give them the opportunity to make things right, but I am past that now. Immediately after taking possession of the plane (and going through my transition training -- owned a "Type B" for 20 years prior to getting the Mooney), I flew my first solo flight directly to the boys at CAV Aero (then in Salina, KS, now in KC). I had the FIKI TKS system installed. I flew the plane through all matter of snow and ice for 4 wonderful seasons (I live in Michigan, so, FIKI.) without an issue. Then, approaching the 5th season (so, winter of 13-14), it started giving me issues where some panels would not wet out, and those that did were anemic compared to previous years. I was religious about running the system every 30 days (at a minimum, usually I would run it about every 2 weeks) just to make sure nothing was drying out or going wrong. I never had to put it on external power or run the engine to get full voltage to get it to completely wet out before this particular season. So, with it not seeming to want to flow properly, I contacted CAV to see if I could bring it by their facility and have them go through the system to ensure that it was in good working order. BTW, I had already replaced the filter 2 times in the 4 previous seasons that I had it. They went through it, deemed it in good working order, and I flew it away. They charged me $880 for that session. When I got home, it had the same issues for which I had taken it in. Called CAV back, and arranged for them to look at it again. They said that they would need it for an entire week. This was on a Friday. I flew it to them that Sunday, left it there, airlined back home, and they had it for 2 weeks. They did this one as "warranty" work, except for parts. I went to pick it up, and it did not seem as though it was as bad as when I brought it in, but it certainly was not as good as the first 4 seasons. I was assured that it was working fine, so I flew it home. It didn't work fine. Fast forward a bit to this season (14-15). I struggled that entire season with it occasionally working, but mostly not. One of the main reasons I went with this plane is for the FIKI, so I was not happy. I spoke with CAV on several occasions, and met with them at OSH. They told me that the only thing that they could do would be to go through the system again. So I made arrangements to take it to them again. This time I stayed with it while they worked on it. They went through the system from stem to stern, purged all the panels, replaced all the seals, checked all the valves, rebuilt both the main pumps, bench tested the pumps, etc., etc. We even bagged the panels to ensure that each one was putting out the spec amounts on both low ("normal") and high ("max") settings. All was well. They charged me $3,300. It lasted a couple of weeks. Back to the same crap as the last season. Even worse, I flew to TX during their big ice storm this year, and it worked perfectly getting me in there. I went to leave 3 days later (after it had gotten above freezing, but then a new storm was on it's way in), and then the entire right wing would not flow at all -- not a drop. I called the mechanic at CAV to ask for advice and was essentially told there was nothing that could be done. I got the plane home, let it sit for a few days. Went out to try to troubleshoot it again, and of course, it all worked fine. Then, a couple of weeks later (after having used it in actual conditions on a couple of flights), I could not get the outboard 12 inches of the right wing, nor the outboard 8 inches of the horizontal stab to flow. I brought it back to them again. Just before taking it to them, I ran it on the ground at home. The flow was anemic and several places did not flow at all. I took it to them. They ran it the next morning (without me present), and of course, it was all working fine, except for the outboard 8 inches of the right wing. They did find a stall strip coming loose, and they replaced that while the plane was in their possession. They also purged the right wing outboard panel. I went to pick it up and test ran it on the ground -- everything flowed except for maybe the outboard 4 inches on the right horizontal stab. They had not purged that panel, but they assured me that it had been flowing when they test ran it, and attributed its feeble performance to being on battery power rather than full bus power. I then ran it with the engine running (full bus power) -- no change. They said that it was as good as it was going to get. I told them that I would fly it over the weekend, and that I had to come back to KC for work the next week anyway, and that I would be in contact with them if I had any further problems. Well, so I ran it at home during preflight to come down to KC yesterday. The same outboard 4 inches of the right stab did not flow. I flew through a small amount of icing leaving Michigan, and all was clear except for that 4 inches. I landed at LXT yesterday afternoon, filled up with fuel, and while taxiing to a parking spot, ran the system (approximately 10 minutes). Now the outboard 6 inches of the right stab, and a full 18-20 inches on the left stab would not flow. I took pictures of the dry spots, texted them to the CAV mechanic, and here is the email reply to me: I’m completely out of ideas as to why. I have done everything that I can think of to your plane and you still have intermittent issues. If you came over I don’t know what I could do to make anything different than what I have already done. I wish that I had a solution that could solve your problems but it doesn’t make any sense to me. So, as you can imagine (and as you can see by the length and tone of my post), I am at wit's end. What am I supposed to do? I paid $50k+ thus far for a FIKI system, and only got 4 seasons' (and a few random flights after that) worth of deicing out of it. CAV is a monopoly, and they have written me off as no longer worth their time. I am completely frustrated with them and their system, and according to them I am the *only* person on the planet who has *ever* had this issue. Suggestions?