EricJ

Service Bulletins are not mandatory for private use under Part 91. The no-back springs are very expensive to replace and do not have a significant history of failure over the history of their use in Mooneys, so most people don't bother with changing them. If your A&P insists on performing every Service Bulletin as though it's mandatory your ownership experience is going to be very expensive.

Good catch!

The SB doc that @47u linked is relevant, and the last page shows a figure indicating the other washer goes between the cowl flap and the cowl. With that additional washer it may help prevent the bolt from backing out since it'll let the bushing rotate more freely. Early Js had some trouble with the cowl flap hinge design and the SB shows the relevant serial numbers. Mine has been reworked a few times and needs it again, and I have to replace some of the bushings every couple of years. Your looks very good in comparison. On mine I make the bushings from brass hollow rod stock. Just saw off a piece the right length.

I've been the same way. A few times in high-crosswind approaches when I did use half-flaps, I wound up putting the rest in on short final. I think the idea for a faster landing speed with a crosswind is to minimize the correction angle or sideload on touchdown, but I suspect those differences are small for small airplanes. Reducing energy at touchdown feels more beneficial to me, but my experience level is low compared to some others.

Standards development happens all the time for all sorts of things. Do you know what companies participated in the development of 5G? WiFi? Any of the multitudes of SAE standards? Announcing standards participation is not done very often, since it's usually not very beneficial to the company to do so. I suspect we'll hear some sort of support or limitations statements from various manufacturers once a particular fuel enters the distribution system and becomes available to consumers. Relevant manufacturers made statements when G100UL came out, but mostly saying that they didn't support use of it. For a fuel that they participated in acceptance via a standard, a statement may look very different, but I wouldn't expect to see one until the fuel became available or was about to.

I don't know where the usual case cracks happen in those engines, but if it is anywhere near where the bolt broke, it may be worth it to dye pen both sides of the case to make sure they didn't crack due to flexing around where the bolt broke. This is probably also a low-probability, and a crack may be latent if it hasn't propagated to the outside of the case yet. I only offer that since you asked for other possible latent failure modes.

They're comparable, with delrin being probably a bit harder. In race cars delrin is often used where solid metal bushings or mounts are illegal (e.g., for suspension mounts, etc.), because it's much harder than even very hard polyurethane and nearly indistinguishable in performance from a solid metal bushing. So it's essentially a "cheater" material for getting around the rules (I encountered it a lot when I was a compliance official, aka scrutineer). It's really hard, robust stuff. It's a really good material for something like a seat roller.

Some do that on experimentals just to get better starts. It's not a bad idea other than adding a little complexity. I don't think it has much to do with whether it's fuel injected or carbureted. That sounds very unusual. It's fairly common to have one mag fire the top on one side and the bottom on the other, but, as Hank mentioned, you'd lose redundancy if a mag fired only one side (which sounds like it'd take a special mag, anyway).

Cutting deltrin is a lot more like cutting metal than cutting wood.

The next time the engine comes up to full temp it'll drive any moisture out of the oil. If it's going to be run at temp soon, it's probably not an issue. If it's going to sit a long time, maybe. Just sitting can introduce water into the oil from condensation on the case, anyway.

I don't think the originals were delrin, they may have been some sort of phenolic or something like that. Delrin is definitely a good choice for a modern replacement material, though, and, yes, delrin can be cut on a lathe.

That's actually not bad. I'm kinda surprised it did that good of a job. It's probably as good as most people would do just base on a problem description and not touching the airplane.

I'll generally concur with the gist of your post, but I think it's worth pointing out that if you do a ground run and the bearing is spun or does spin, there is significant risk that it'll ruin the crankshaft, which is the most expensive part in the engine. It's just another consideration in planning your path forward. That said, I think the risk that the bearing is spun is pretty low.

Yes, the Continental fuel injection system is fundamentally different from the Lycoming in theory of operation.

It's a pretty easy mod to add an interior release to the hatch, which I highly recommend for the obvious reasons. It was the first thing I did to my airplane after getting my Airframe mechanic rating. Sometimes the things, they just stack up.

I have a climbout checklist that includes the boost pump, gear up, flaps up, etc. It's handier than one would hope.

There was somebody here making and selling them a while back, but it was apparently not DonMuncy, and I don't remember who it was. I bought a set from whoever it was, and they're very nice. Haven't installed them yet...

+1 that the electric pump is the backup during takeoff and landing in case the mechanical pump fails. When you're at cruise altitude you'll have time to troubleshoot, but near the ground you can't count on having, and likely won't have, time to deal with sorting out what happened and turning on the electric pump. At least, I'm not gonna count on that. Another utility of the electric pump is that if the mechanical pump gets overheated for whatever reason it can boil the fuel and cavitate during it's suction draw stroke. The electric pump will pressurise the input to the mechanical pump and make this much less likely, or mitigate it if it happens. I have to use the electric pump during hot starts at high DA for this reason. The mechanical pump and the electric pump are designed to be reasonably fail-safe with each other. In other words, the diaphragm-type mechanical fuel pump in many Mooneys will allow fuel to flow through it if it fails if there is pressure from the electric pump. Likewise if the electric pump fails (or isn't turned on), the mechanical pump can still draw fuel through it. These common failure modes are all tested and have to be demonstrated during certification, so they're all tested, safe states. Also, the fuel servo is essentially an output fuel pressure regulator, and it is largely insensitive to input fuel pressure as long it is high enough to allow regulation of the required output pressure. Increasing the input pressure doesn't really bother it, which is why you can turn the electric pump on or off and not see a change in engine output parameters. It's extremely difficult to overpressure the input of the fuel servo, so that's nothing to worry about.

Having the refiners and distributors on board means that they had the opportunity to verify materials compatibility with their equipment. Since engine and airframe manufacturers were also involved, you can bet materials compatibility was addressed for them as well. So for those still wondering what the difference between the STC and ASTM processes might entail, this is a big one that the STC process can obviously get very wrong that is much more likely to not be an issue with an ASTM-compliant fuel. I'm a little surprised that it seems like this is still not recognized by some.

I was gonna suggest a paintless dent repair kit as well. They're not very expensive and they're pretty effective for a lot of things. Hail dents is something they're pretty good at.

Ouch. This is not the first time I've heard of this happening. I'm glad you caught it on the ground.

The bike is so much faster than the car on the straights that the car has to be significantly faster than the bike in the twisties to do that. F1 cars are as much as 20-30 seconds faster than the MotoGP bikes on the same tracks, but they make tons of downforce. AMP was an awesome track. I have hundreds of laps there in both directions, and quite a few in the half-track configurations as well. We raced there from the time that it opened, so about twenty years. Losing the PIR road course was worse, though. :'(

Also check for an intake leak on that cylinder. It's just a last-ditch thing to check, but it might be revealing.

Most race cars, even in amateur series, can corner well over 1g with race tires. Add aero downforce and cornering g-forces can go significantly higher. So even without aero a properly set-up car on sticky tires will often outcorner even a race bike. Bikes don't make enough downforce due to either aero or weight or have a tire contact patch big enough to provide the lateral forces needed to match a car. Straight line acceleration is a no-brainer, though, that's where the bikes get all their speed and lap time.

He's right for racing. Bikes generally don't have enough tire contact patch or downforce to corner or brake as well as a decent race car.