0TreeLemur

To block off the unused tach sender port, my A&P/IA cut a circular piece of thick gasket material that fits snuggly in the bottom of the existing cap and re-installed it. It serves to block off the small opening in the cap where the cable passed and seal the engine.

On my IFR check ride- I was waaay cool, established, stable descent with a lot of trim under the hood. All was great until the DPE said "go missed". Throttle in, and boy did I have my work cut out for me then! Pushing really hard on the column with my left arm while turning that itty-bitty trim wheel as fast as I could with my right hand. I can imagine he must have had a grin on his face...

Thanks. Teleworking brings out the P.E. in me.

That's what I thought. Thanks @cliffy and @M20Doc . Much appreciated.

So, parts arrived from A/C Spruce. Pop quiz: Are Tinnerman nuts installed as in A) or B)? I think I know which one it is, just want to be sure. Thx.

Imagine an optimized cooling duct that eliminates the dog house... That would be cool. (pun intended)

I've been teleworking for 3 full weeks. This means that I'm spending 5-7 hours per day on online teleconferences. Multiple trips for meetings I was supposed to attend are canceled, including my attendance to big conferences that were canceled in the U.S. and Europe. I was supposed to go to Vienna in early May. That's not happening. My typical commercial butt-seat-mile count averages 30,000-50,000. This year, 0.0 and counting. I'm getting really tired of being at home on telecons almost full time, and would consider a long trip in my C using personal time off just to get out of the house- after I get a nose gear door fixed Saturday, that is.

Question- where did you order those assorted sizes of rivets in small lot sizes? Spruce only sells them in larger lots of about 1000. Thx.

Ok I'll get 'er done.

Thx Clarence. I did notice that the left one has a little fore-aft slop. I'd estimate it to be < 1/16". How much do you think is too much?

@M20Doc, can or should we reuse the old Tinnerman nuts that my co-pilot found lost in the grease, or just use all new ones?

UPDATE: Today we removed the forward belly panels from LHS and RHS. Here's what we discovered: The piano hinges on both sides were fastened with an assortment of mostly #4 screws on both sides, of various lengths, all but one with a pointy end, and only three used Tinnerman nuts. My co-pilot found six Tnuts unassociated with screws on the left side in the miscellaneous agglomeration of quasi-gritty and used ta be sticky substance formerly known as lubricant as she cleaned the area. Oddly, the Tnuts on the LHS had loosened. This indicates that either the wrong type of screws were used or the Tnuts lost their grip somehow. Plan of action: order new type-B screws with Tnuts and replace them all on LHS and RSH during next weekend's social-distancing at the airport. Regular preflight now to include jiggling the nose gear doors to make sure they haven't worked loose. Thanks to everyone for the guidance. -Fred

Aha. As usual, thanks for your reply! I did not know that you were a MSC. Too bad you're so far away! In another country! -Fred

Friday I thought about making a round trip flight from Tuscaloosa, AL to Laramie, WY, going west Saturday and returning today to rescue a son who is stuck at a college that has canceled classes. The forecast I saw Friday night for today's weather made it a no-go for me. Looking at your screen cap, the models were pretty close and it seems that they helped me make a good call because freezing level interactions in precip or clouds would be impossible to avoid along the route. Remember the radar beam gets higher off the surface the further you get away from the radar. Out in your part of the country the radars are pretty far apart so they don't do a good job of showing you where ice might be a problem. Ice in any form just can't be messed with in our planes. About three weeks ago on an IFR practice flight here in AL I encountered freezing rain at 7000 with my outside air temperature sensor which mounted in the wing about 30" outboard from the cabin indicating that it was above freezing (+1C). It happened really fast and accumulated much quicker than I would have thought with an airframe that is above freezing. Windy.com shows modeled freezing levels. Those models are initialized using the twice-daily weather balloon data so they have some validity and are quite good. Remember, clouds below freezing can still be supercooled water drops. Any time you go into a cloud and the temp. is less than 0C, keep an eye out for ice accumulation on the leading edge. Picked this up in about 120 seconds after I penetrated a cloud layer at 8000 over Little Rock, AR in Feb. I knew that the tops were about 8,500, so I asked for higher and got above the clouds. A Cirrus trying to climb up through the clouds after taking off from Little Rock was picking up enough ice that he told the controller that he was unsure if he was going to be able to climb through it. He made it. I'd just say that until you get more experience, avoid anything that looks like a freezing level interaction . Wait until it warms up to spread your IFR wings. Be a chicken.

That was then (2014). I can't seem to find them in 2020. MS is a time machine. Sadly its a real-time time machine, so we have to wait six years to go six years into the future...

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll take a look at the area that seems like missing metal and see if that is real or some kind of shadow/artifact.

Is this version of the parts manual available online? Both the print and pdf versions of it that I have don't show this level of detail- they just show the door on Fig. 26 with no fasteners or holes. The parts list does list 9 ea. AN530-4R8 screws with 9 ea. A1890-4Z-1 speed nuts. Your version of the Parts manual would have answered my question. Thx.

Thanks everyone! Now I have another activity to keep me "socially distant" tomorrow!

Thanks. They seem to be regular sheet metal screws. BTW- I didn't write that they took the gear doors off- I wrote that they took the gear off to paint. It seems that anyone working down there on such a task would have ample opportunity to notice floppy gear doors??

Hi everyone, while doing some "social distancing" in the hangar today and giving our C a belly rub, I noticed that the left nose gear door piano hinge is really loose. The aft screw is gone, and the screws are progressively looser further aft. These seem like No. 6 sheet metal screws. Do I just tighten them up and replace the missing one? Is that it? Is there some kind of loc-tite that could be applied? It seems really dangerous vulnerability. If this hinge were to separate in on takeoff or approach, dog only knows what would happen but I can't imagine any good outcome. I don't have an A&P on field to ask. Anyone seen this before? Given that the annual was done just last month and they did take the gear off to paint them, this is probably a recent development, with only about 30 hours flown since then. Thanks for any useful experience-based guidance. -Fred

Only experience can produce humor this spot on!

Glad to hear that you are improving. Please continue to take care and improve.

According to Mike Busch in Engines, 50 ROP is the worst place to run our carbureted engines. Highest internal pressures at that mixture. He recommends 80-100 ROP.

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/elpages/pbcircuitbrkr.php Another option.

When the governor in our C went south in the summer of 2018, I took it to South Coast in Bessemer. A few days later they called back and congratulated me on having an antique! Said that it had many AD's that were not in compliance, and that parts would be hard to find. More expensive to repair than replace. Sold me a PCU5000 at what my A&P said was a very fair price.