SantosDumont

That is what has me worried is that I haven’t had any of those signs of distress. It’s been running great for the past three years I’ve owned it. I need to find someone that can come do a house call out in Boulder City because I have all the panels off, seats out, etc. it’s probably two days of labor for me to put everything back together, then get a ferry permit, which my understanding is that I’d need an A&P to inspect and sign off on anyway.

No I saw him do it. My gauge was brand new from Spruce. He also tested it again with his and got the same higher results that mine did.

Previous: 77/74/75/59/47/50 Retest: 74/75/72/68/73/68

Anyone know an A&P/IA in Las Vegas who makes house calls? I need a 2nd opinion on my engine. The mechanic I'm using for my annual in my hangar told me my engine is unairworthy. We had a couple bad compression test results. Then I bought my own tools to double check, and I got pretty acceptable results. So I'm not convinced anything is wrong with it. It hasn't had any metal in the oil filter, oil analysis are good, temps are stable in flight. I think he is just scared of the high engine time at 2120 hrs.

Usually I do a cruise climb with full mixture then run LOP in cruise. That's the procedure specified in the manual for the IO-360-ES because it has an altitude compensating fuel pump.

This has been the worst annual so far. I feel like I don't have any confidence in my mechanics opinion on my engine. I read Mike Busch's book and watched a bunch of his videos and feel conflicted about engine mortality after overhaul. It seems better to keep running something that hasn't shown me any signs of distress until a bad compression check. Also I bought my own borescope. I rotated the prop though and what looked like pitting disappeared... seems like it was just oil on the cylinder wall. I'm not sure my mechanic knows what to look for considering he doesn't own a borescope, we had to go borrow one. He's pretty old school and about to retire. But I'm not really sure what I'm looking for either other than no marks on the cylinder walls and discolored exhaust valves. I'm probably going to have to get a second opinion on this and gather a lot more data points.

It's an IO-360-ES, so not turbo'ed. Jewell actually called me back and said ~$18k for parts, ~4k for labor.

Does anyone have experience with the inner gear doors? My mechanic that I’m using for my annual is concerned that they aren’t flush with the wing in the rear. I’m bot sure who made them or where to find the install manual to confirm.

Yawn. Sigh.

If I had understood all the missions I would try to use my Mooney for after I bought it... I would have bought an A36 Bonanza. If you are constantly loading cargo, then the cargo doors will be 100x more useful to you than the tiny baggage door. I don’t regret the hundreds of hours in my F though, they gave me experience to fully understand my missions.

The reality is that because of weather your plane will work out about 30% of the time... unless you are in the Southwest, then it will work about 50%. There are whole months in the winter where it is just a no-go.

Why don’t you just take the panels off and look for discoloration? Take pictures, send them to your shop to look at. Of course, then you have to put the panels back on, fly the to the shop and take them back off again for annual.

Anyone ever seen something like this... we tested hot/cold and got low compression readings... the lowest was 47. Two weeks go by gathering quotes for overhaul and just for funsies and to double check before I drop $20k, I bought my own compression tester. Tested it my self, lowest reading I got was 68. Called my mechanic over, he tests with his tester and his readings are higher than mine... So we got out the borescope and took a look. Some pitting, a couple scrapes but nothing horrendous. Wondering what went wrong or what changed that we’re getting such drastically different measurement. Been doing oil analysis for the past two years, and everything is reporting normal. So wondering what to do now... just keep flying it? Go ahead with the overhaul? The CB in me says just keep going, but the risk adverse part of me says overhaul on a TBO engine isn’t a bad idea.

You don’t have to run the sync wire for the Whelen 650s. I didn’t on mine with the navs and taillight and they all fire at the same time (they are wired to the same switch).

Anyone know how to ship the engine? Reading through the manual and its mentioning protective plugs, but I don’t see part numbers for them. Also is there a standard shipping crate for aircraft engines? Where do I get that from?

Hmm that’s a bummer... they only have like 50 hours on them.

Called Jewell and they said around $17k parts and labor, not including mags since I just IRAN'ed them... seems cheap when the shop down the street wants $34k and a factory reman is $42k. I think I'ma CB this one and get my prop overhauled too.

I did the same thing. Works awesome and cost $20. Except the one mod I did was to put some transparent velcro in the corners of the window so I could easily pop the shades on and off.

It’s my first plane and it already had the conversion so I don’t really know the difference. The guy who did it flew the plane from the US to Australia and back so I guess it worked out. I have about 500 hours in it. TAS about 155 at 8.5k. It has good enough power until about 10k, it seems happiest at 11.5/12.5. Gonna be interesting to see what the difference is when it gets back from OH.

Yeah we ran it, got the same results as cold. $34k quote from Nevada Aircraft Engines. I’ll be getting a quote from Jewell.

Well my TCM IO-360-ES1B got to 2120.1 hrs. Just started the annual and the front two cylinders are 40/80. Guess it's time for overhaul. Anyone ever used Nevada Aircraft Engines? They are right down the street from me and my mechanic suggested using them. I kind of like the idea of having someone local do it so I don't have to ship the engine out somewhere.

I’ve thought that if I could find an A36 partnership I’d buy in for the times when I want to fly the family somewhere and keep the Mooney for my primary mission of just flying myself around.

I fly around in the SW, which most days you can do VFR at 6500/7500. I just took my first trip out to Denver in my F last week. Went around South of the rockies East of Santa Fe at 11500, came back through Mosca pass at 12500. Sometimes I think a turbo would be nice, but after a few flights with an O2 hose in my nose I realized I'd rather just ride SWA if I need to go higher.

Ah yeah those days I can't... have meetings in LA then have to fly out to Los Cruces, NM... I'm around before / after then though.

I keep my plane out in Boulder City. I was looking for a partner for a while, interestingly enough one of the guys I bought it from flies for SWA. I’ll be working 22/23 but I’m down to meet up another time.