BaldEagle

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.

Thanks for the recommendation!

Me again, So I’m having a bit of a crap week. Got my airplane back from the avionics shop after installing an Aspen MFD (Aspen Evolution 2000 upgrade) and removing the original altimeter and airspeed indicator. Took it for a test flight, tried to retract gear, gear unsafe alert illuminates, sonalert goes off. I’m guessing they forgot to plumb the pitot into the airspeed safety switch or something. Any recommendations for troubleshooting? Of course the shop is closed this week, and the airplane is currently in annual right now in any case, so I have some time to poke around.

They are awesome, they repaired an alternator for me and turned it around in 24 hours. They seem to be closed this week though.

I need a 11-10386 Ferrule seating tool. My IA has one, which he loaned to someone, who is out of town for a few months. Looks like I also need a W-111 M crimping tool. Easier to just find a shop that I can send the harness to for repair at this stage, but most places seem to be closed this week. I spoke to a couple of A&Ps and both said to just replace the harness as they are cheap, but that’s academic as no one has stock (Kelly Aerospace 10-821414-8 replaces the original harness).

Evening all, Brains here pulled too hard on an ignition lead and broke the plug. The harness is less than 2 years old so looking at repair options. This is a dual mag harness for a 1978 J. Kelly Aerospace sells individual leads as a kit but a special tool is required to install and that seems to be impossible to find. Replacing the harness isn’t an option either as no one has stock. Sooooo, it looks like my only option is to send it off somewhere that can repair / overhaul. Any suggestions….?

I have a Power Flow exhaust on my J (installed by previous owner). I can't speak to performance improvements (although I suspect any improvement is barely measurable), but a couple of notes: when installing, replacing the air filter for a K&N is recommended; the prop needs to be balanced and as part of the STC the exhaust needs to be disassembled at each annual and lubricated with a high temp paste. This is about 2 hours labor.

I got them for 165 each from Chief when I ordered them in February. That’s a pretty dramatic price increase. Aviation economics is bizarre.

Shop rate is 50% higher where I’m at… 2.75 hours to do the nose gear pucks, but there was some additional labor cleaning up rust, replacing a bolt when doing the main gear pucks, and a couple of other minor items which padded the hours and price came in pretty much where I expected. I guess we’re just used to paying way too much for everything in this corner of the country.

I just got mine done. Chief was slightly cheaper than Spruce when I was shopping a few weeks ago so I went that route, but including tax, shipping, it was still $2k for 11 of these buggers ($1955 to be precise). And about 1.4 AMU labor. They were nearly half that price 3 years ago when I was going to get this done… blaming myself for procrastinating….

That’s my dilemma, I did the Max upgrade a couple of years ago, and if a second Aspen comes in at circa 10k I may as well pull my existing Aspen and go with a 10 inch G3X Touch or similar. Which also gives me options when my legacy autopilot finally gives up.

Isn’t the install hours substantially higher with the 1000 MFD though? I don’t fly much actual these days so I’m trying to balance the additional features / utility with the price point.

Evening all, Anyone here done this? I’m happy to keep my vacuum system so leaning towards the 500 MFD Max and trying to get an idea of install hours before reaching out to the local shops for quotes.

Thanks for sharing. Avidyne have just put up a couple of videos to their YouTube channel covering all the new features and an upgrade guide. I was surprised that the owner / operator (non-A&P) can download 10.3 and self-update the box, although that’s not legal for us non-experimental owners, and if you brick the box during the upgrade you’re out at least $1,200 and grounded for a while as the box has to go back to the factory according to the small print. So I’ll be calling my avionics shop shortly…

That’s where mine was sent to a couple of weeks ago. Aero Accessories are awesome, highly recommended. They turned it around in 24 hours and for a very reasonable price.

For additional piece of mind, I took my ‘78 J for a test flight yesterday after reinstalling a repaired alternator: my JPI was showing 14 volts while the battery was being topped off and then settled back to 13.8 volts in cruise and amps dropped back to a low positive number (barely readable on the original factory gauge but probably about 2 amps).