0TreeLemur

Ditto. Installing screws by hand so you can feel what is happening is the ONLY way on an airplane. When it starts to feel "odd" you can back it out and investigate further. That's how I spotted the problem in the first place.

There are three Mooney's based at TCL. I haven't yet met the owner of the plane that flew this mission, N7132V.

To answer my own question it is not a floating nut plate so alignment was not the issue. Running a tap in did clear the way. It seems odd to me that suddenly it developed a problem. I can't imagine what caused it to change. I suspect that nut plate is going to need replacing sooner rather than later by an A&P with the experience and tools, which I am not.

This is what I do too. And it allmost always works. There is a video by Don Maxwell about hot-starting a Mooney that I really enjoyed and thought was educational. It's linked here on this site multiple places I'm sure. In that video he said "Lycoming engines always start flooded." I took that to heart and it relieved my stress about starting a hot or warm engine.

Does not answer my questions at all.

An A&P did some work on my Mooney today. He and I put the lower cowl on and he left for the day. While installing the upper cowl I encountered a problem. The upper cowl on my '83 J has a bunch of quarter-turn fasteners and three machine screws on each side. Two machine screws go into the stanchion around the propeller flange, and one on the forward corners. The screw on the right forward corner started normally but after a few turns started to get real tight... Those are stainless steel screws and it felt like it might be starting to spall. So I backed it out. It was tough to turn and definitely felt like it was spalling. The threads were definitely messed up. Looking in there, the threads on the inside nut plate are not perfectly aligned with the hole in the nut plate. The threads on the left front nutplate are centered. On the right hand side it seems that the nut is too high. Looking in there I could see a many threads in the bottom of the hole and none in the top. Question: are those nut plates with captured floating nuts? Why is it suddenly out of alignment, and how can I center it? Any ideas on how to fix this? One Idea I have is to run a tap in there and see if that centers it. Thought I would ask the collective about this idea before trying it. Thanks, Fred

According to the log books for my '83J the NBS was replaced in Oct. 2002: "C/W Mooney SB M20-279 installed ModKit-1 P/N M20-279-000" The sticker on the actuator labeled "Maintenance record clutch spring replacement A 10-85" has a "1" punched in the the first square. It seem that in 2002 Mooney sold a kit.

Nice thread here-

If eBay didn't charge so much commission, I'd buy this thing and list it there. This is a great price for a great engine monitor. IIRC when I bought this same system for my J a couple of years ago it cost closer to 6 AMU's. Somebody buy this! It's primary for everything. You can take out all your old analog fuel gauges, tach, and MP.

Follow up: I bought a 10-32 Helicoil insertion tool off eBay. I put in some oil, and ran that tap in/out a couple of times. Degreased with some brake cleaner. Loaded a short (5 thread) Helicoil insert into the machine- zipped it right into place. Those insertion tools are the sizzle. Problem solved.

That's not terrible. That still makes this system a good deal IMO.

I sold an EI engine monitor when I upgraded our J to a JPI ED900. EI gave me an estimate of a couple hundred $$ to do the reprogramming. Curious- is JPI much higher than that?

When I was troubleshooting the A/P in our J, I replaced that switch to negative effect. When I was studying it I read that the high failure rate is caused by the fact that under trim servo load, the switch is operating near its rated current. A good way to extend the life of that switch is to never use it (except in case of emergency). If you never use it, it never disconnects under load, and doesn't damage the contacts. Not my informed opinion, just something I read that kind of makes sense. It is a minor pain to replace but not a major pain like it seems replacing the trim switch would be.

Mouser part number MB2061SS1W01-BC If you have trouble finding it in stock elsewhere.

Is your C equipped with a PC system? If so, Is it working? Adding an Accutrak II to a working PC system is relatively straightforward. My C model had a working PC system when I bought it. I added Accutrak II (NAV mode), Accuflite II (HDG mode) and PC-AH (altitude hold). The Accuflite and PC-AH parts are damn near unobtanium. I've got spare parts for the Accutrak II left over. Others might have more parts. If you don't have an installed PC system, then doing any of this would probably not make sense.

That is an excellent question. If yes, then the question becomes are you willing to live with a reduced margin of safety on CHT that prevents your engine from self destructing?

The credit for introducing tetraethyl lead (TEL) to gasoline as an octane booster belongs to Thomas Midgley Jr.—an American mechanical and chemical engineer working under Charles Kettering at General Motors in the early 1920s. BTW he also invented Freon. Better living through chemistry!

Follow-up. Used contact cleaner on connectors. On runup, pressure in normal range. Seems to be a connector issue. Odd though- the metri-pak connectors are well sealed. When I disconnected they made a little 'pop' sound like they were pulling a partial vacuum as I disconnected them.

I tried the Helicoil. The kit I bought had a slotted insertion tool that exhibited a strength similar to plastic. Somehow as the Helicoil started to get harder to turn- the tool end stripped. It's toast. A search for another insertion tool turned up $150 pre-winding units that I"m sure would work.

Exactly. WWII pilots routinely ran tanks dry. Nothing quite as worthless as an unknown quantity of fuel sitting in the bottom of a tank when you are trying to get somewhere. The POH for the older Mooneys more or less says: Take off and fly 1 hour on one tank, then empty the other tank, and land back on the tank you took off with.

So do spouses! When we flew a C model I used to like to run a tank dry when doing long cross-country flights so I was left with all useable in one tank. Normally I noticed the fp drop and switched without anybody else knowing. That one time I didn't, I got her attention. From that point forward, when I would work to dry a tank I'd tell her. Man, she was all over that fp gage. Never happened again. In our J with LOP ops burning 8-8.5 gph and 64 useable, I practically never need to run one dry. Six hours is about the longest leg I want to fly.

The blades were red tagged. One was overcut 0.001" and the other 0.003". I don't know how many times it had been overhauled. The A/C was a '67 model and prop was installed in 1977, don't know if it was new or used. Probably used. It had the "A" hub. I didn't want an "A" hub- PITA. Rather than hunt around for a B-hub prop, I decided to go for the new Top Prop. All I'm saying is that a good B hub prop works great if you can find one. There is little to gain by going with a new Top Prop, unless your wallet is just too darn heavy from all that extra money in it. The challenge of course is finding a used prop that is in good shape and will take another O/H if necessary.

Thanks @Rick Junkin. I too suspect a connection issue. Looking back through the EDM data collected during the past year, this problem has been intermittent, but increasing if frequency and severity of late. The transducers included with my JPI use MetriPak connectors, which are "supposed" to be weather resistant. I'll go ahead and remove the cowl and give them a look see.

When I bought our M20C, I was a 400 hour private pilot coming of a 15-year non-flying sentence (life got in the way). Most of my time was in non-complex airplanes. Flying a Mooney was a handful for me because there is just so much more to pay attention to- especially speed control in the pattern. I flew VFR for a couple of years before starting my work on instrument rating and it was definitely a good way to go. I got used to the flight complexity before adding a whole bunch more IFR complexity to the mix. Something to consider. When shooting an approach in turbulence under the foggles you want flap settings, boost pump, landing gear, speed control, to be automatic. If they aren't you will struggle mightily.

I have a J model with a JPI EDM900 installed. Lately after startup the fuel pressure has been indicating over 30 psi. With or without boost pump on. During runup it sometimes indicates above 30. After takeoff, it indicates 27-28 psi. It seems unlikely that an engine driven fuel pump is going to go over max. rated pressure at any engine speed < redline. Suspect a transducer problem. Anybody dealt with this? I'm not worried about it- I just don't like it. Anyone got a working spare they'll part with? The part is made by Kavlico, with 0-30 range outputting 50mV at 30psi. EDIT: Added screencap of JPI data. The red line is MAP, light blue line is FP. You can see after I took off, it went back down into the normal range. Had a time mid-flight there were FP was pretty noisy.