Spike Kavalench

No, it wasn’t an over boost issue. The Arcraft Maintenance Engineer/shop owner who sold me the airplane had a great story.. he told me that he had found a very small amount of metal in the oil, and that he had purchased the plane from the previous owner who didn’t want to deal with it. He said he pulled the cylinders and did the piston pin SB and the engine looked great. Very common cause of metal in Lycomings, he said. He said that he was sure it was a good engine. So I figured, sounds reasonable. After I bought it, however, two of his ex employees warned me that they had found substantially more than a “small amount” of metal and that they had told the shop owner the airplane should be grounded. That didn’t happen. The engine was reassembled and the plane was sold to me with a fresh annual inspection, fully “servicable”. I had already paid for the plane after hearing this revelation so I flew it for five hours and we pulled the suction screen (which is STEP NUMBER ONE in Lycoming’s SB describing what to do when metal is found in the oil). Well we found so much metal and crud jammed in there it was obvious the screen had never been removed. (Step number ONE, remember..) So we grounded the plane and pulled the engine for overhaul. They found one main bearing chewing itself up and the cam and lifters were pitted. “Well why no pre-buy inspection? Idiot?” you might say.. Well you’re not wrong, and I shoulda, but when you buy a plane from a licensed mechanic who does pre-buy inspections for a living and he signs it off as serviceable, there is or should be an expectation you are getting a serviceable airplane. I was wrong to expect that. Chalk it up to one really expensive life lesson. But at least I have an engine I now KNOW is dependable. And that’s all I’m sayin about that. For now.

Well after the surprise of having to do an IRAN overhaul on my engine and spending over 20,000 dollars to do it, I am rethinking the affordability of owning an airplane at all at this stage of my life, nearing retirement and all.. So, truth be told, I would probably sell my Rayjay Turbo equipped 61 M20B and take a huge loss right about now. I’m sure it’s only worth about 35k given it’s age and I’m into it for a lot more than that, the exact number both hard to calculate and not something I’d really want to know anyway, but if someone showed up with 35k USD I’d have a hard time saying no right about now. Not advertising it, just mulling it around...

Awesome!!!! Thanks for sharing. I wasn't planning on using it during cruise but I may give that a try. Any chance of sending a digital copy of your Rayjay POH?

Yeah. A previous owner must have spent a lot of money installing it. We live in mountainous territory here so it helps to get up and over the rocks. Also, it's just cool to have!

Max MP is posted in a chart on the panel, sorry I don’t have it handy. But in general, I will only use the turbo to restore sea level mp if required during climb. It’s just a turbo normalizer kind of thing, not for boosting power above factory specs.

FYI guys, Alan is a straight shooter. I called him about a used throttle cable, explained the symptoms, and he said immediately: “You don’t need a cable” and went on to explain how to fix my issue and talked me out of buying a cable from him. This should also get me back flying a lot sooner, so a big THANK YOU to Alan for that!

Throttle cable ever been replaced? How many hours on it? Know where to find a new one? I’m striking out everywhere.