BaldEagle

Interesting. My Powerflow exhaust was installed by the previous owner, but I believe it was installed by the Powerflow folks at their facility in Fl. I'll reach out to the vendor to see what they have to say.

Morning, Annual coming up and a handful of annoying things to take care of this year. This is a Powerflow exhaust on a J. What's the recommended practice for treating cosmetic corrosion? Thought I'd ask here before reaching out to the vendor.

Interesting! I just spoke with Avemco and they quoted us ~3k (married pilots / owner discount). This is nearly double what I'm paying now with Old Republic, but came in a little less than expected so this is all rather encouraging now. Very happy I can get a policy with both of us on it at last. Parker is also working through some options as well so Avemco is likely a backup option. Thanks all for the feedback. Very interesting and informative thread.

Happy Friday all, Last year my wife passed her private checkride — yay! Obviously she wants to fly the Mooney that she (we) own, but the insurance company says, “hell, no”. Understandably. So she’s been flying an Arrow and Comanche on a club insurance policy, and has ~50 hrs retract, 200TT now. At what point will she be insurable? She is getting frustrated burning money flying club aircraft when we own a perfectly good Mooney that isn’t flying enough. Obviously she will need some hours with a Mooney CFI, but that’s not an option until she is listed on the policy. Chicken and egg situation…

I know I'm late to this thread but I did exactly this, box purchased from Avionics Source. I had a non-WAAS GNS430 so I had to replace the antenna. Existing coax was good so that saved some labor (as I recall the length of the coax is also important). If you need to replace the coax it means pulling out the headliner, which means pulling out the side panels, which means pulling out the front seats, etc., quite annoying and labor intensive. I had to replace the existing GPS CB for a higher amperage CB, per Avidyne install requirements (I think 5 amp to 7 amp), and this was a horrible job. The A&P spent the best part of the day working on this alone and was swearing the whole time ('78 J). As I was going from non-WAAS to WAAS there was an additional setting on the IFD I had to set to get the glideslope up. I've been flying with it for a few years now and my only regret is not swapping this out earlier. I have mine driving 2 Aspens, which drive a legacy KFC200. Bottom line, it's a slide-in replacement but you could be looking at a couple of day's labor.

Gratuitous pic of the upgrade. I know, I’m late to the party.

Thought I’d post an update as this is now resolved. It took many hours to troubleshoot, eventually the shop pulled the airspeed safety switch, bench tested it and confirmed that the switch was mechanically sound but flex the cable and it would behave erratically. Fortunately I managed to find a new replacement switch, and I’m flying again.

About $700. You send in the old harness because they need the cap. I think I paid $800+ for the Kelly Aerospace harness, but they give you a $100 credit if you send in the old harness. This is the for dual harness of course (D2000/3000). What I like about the Maggie harness is that if I break another lead I can send the harness in and they will replace or repair the lead if it's one of their harnesses. Before I went this route I ordered a replacement lead "kit" from Spruce for the Kelly harness and it was $260. For a single freaking lead. My A&P/IA knows how to replace these leads, but we could not find the tools to install it in any case so that was a good exercise in frustration.

I just got this back and installed this morning. It comes with a baseball hat, an American flag and a branded coaster, attachment hardware, paperwork, and they even paint the nuts blue. They clearly have pride in their product. An interesting observation, the old cap I sent them they noticed that it was painted but not primed so the paint just flakes off, and the cables lengths were out of spec with too much slack. These guys strip, prime and paint, and assemble the harness to spec, and the price point is reasonable. Very positive experience, thanks all for the recommendation!

Looks like my switch is bad. This is for a '78 J. I have the original Whitman General unit, which is being replaced by the VEP / 880013-505 unit which is listed as the alternative for my serial no. -- lucky me was able to get the last unit in stock from LASAR The avionics shop does not have the Mooney wiring diagrams so I'm trying to make their life as easy as possible (because I'm cheap). I have a scanned copy of the wiring diagram from the service manual (PDF) but it is barely legible. Is there anything more useful out there, i.e. with wiring colors, etc.?

We’ll that was wishful thinking on my part. Gear now retracts at 0 KTAS (on jacks) without pressing override button. Sigh.

Thanks for all the suggestions. The avionics shop resolved this, it was the electrical connector on the switch that wasn’t seated properly as I understand it. Happy because I was resigned to dropping 1 AMU on a new switch…

I got the airplane up on jacks, gear comes up with the override button held down. I pressurized the pitot system to get 120 kts on the PFD and the gear wouldn’t come up (without pressing the override button) so it’s not a calibration issue unless it’s way out of spec. Eyeballing the airspeed safety switch the pitot and electrical connections look good. That’s about as much as I can do so waiting patiently for the avionics shop to open. I have the Whitman-General part, looks like there’s an alternative option for my serial no. if a replacement can’t be found (assuming the worst, that the switch is bad).

I’ll report back here. They do dual mag harnesses, slightly longer turnaround though (they quoted me 2 weeks). The person I spoke to was super nice.

Decided to go the Maggie route, lots of positive reviews so looking forward to installing this. I’ve not had much luck with Kelly Aerospace stuff (also had one of their alternators crap out on me and it was less than 3 years old) so easily persuaded to replace rather than repair.