PT20J

Thanks for clarifying that, Clarence. I was looking at 32-10-01 which doesn’t show the grease fitting. I missed the cross reference to 57-10-02. Love the Mooney IPC Skip

Interesting that the guys that championed LOP operation and promulgated the red box concept have said they don’t see much use for percent power. Most of us learned to fly using power settings based on percent power and clearly many still do. For those that don’t — how do you decide where to park the throttle, prop, and mixture?

Interesting - my M20J IPC doesn’t show a grease fitting on the forward trunnion. Do some planes have that? From the drawing it appears that the forward trunnion uses a roller bearing which might be pre-packed and sealed, but I’ve never had one apart. Perhaps @M20Doc can shed some light here. BTW, I believe they are properly called zerk fittings (Invented by Oscar Zerk in 1929 according to Wikipedia). Skip

Just put the part that slips into the nose gear truss in a vise and bend the shaft enough that the T handle is approximately in line with the centerline of the airplane when the nose wheel is centered and it will be good. Did that on my ‘78 J after the third time I fell on my butt (slow learner). My ‘94 J has the optional very pretty chrome plated (very smooth and slippery) tow bar with the proper factory angle and it never slips, even when wet.

The standard bar won’t slip if you bend the shaft slightly so that the part that slips into the nose gear is at a slight acute angle to the shaft. Piper has nice clips on the Cherokees - you could get those, unless Piper parts prices are as bad as Mooney parts prices

Mike Busch also has recommended setting up an escrow account for a fixed duration that holds back a portion of the purchase price. If the cam survives the escrow term, the seller gets the money; if not it goes to the buyer. Seems pretty reasonable. All part of the negotiation. Skip

Pretty much this. You can minimize it but hard to check things like metallurgy. I think this sums it up. Just like the asking price, the depth of the pre-buy is whatever the buyer and seller negotiate and this will vary according to each party's perceived risk and risk tolerance. In my case, I found a 94 J with less than 1200 hours on it that had been well maintained and had some nice avionics upgrades. On the down side, it was burning about 1/2 qt per hour and hadn't been flown much the last few years. I had a thorough pre-buy done by Don Maxwell who personally borescoped the cylinders. No metal in the filter, compressions in the mid-70s, oil analysis was good and trends OK compared to previous several. The engine started and ran well. The airplane seemed a little slower than I recalled my last one, but that was many years ago, with less instrumentation and fewer antennas. I didn't even consider pulling a cylinder. I negotiated a fair price based on known condition (the rest of the pre-buy showed only very minor issues). Twenty five hours after purchase, the oil ring in #4 broke taking out part of the piston skirt and scoring the cylinder. When we pulled the jug (low compression, metal in the filter) we found the cam spalled. So, now I have a rebuilt A3B6. Cost some money, but I ditched the dual mag, and got roller lifters and a zero-time logbook. Maybe the ring was broken before I bought it. Maybe we could have figured it out if we had pulled the #4 jug. Maybe we should have pulled them all. Maybe we should have disassembled the entire engine. I think at some point you just have to accept that buying a 25-year-old piece of complicated machinery is a risky proposition. The point is: I'm fine with my decision based on what I knew at the time; others might have wanted to probe further. Skip

No, that sounds exactly right. A coordinated turn is a pitching and yawing maneuver. (A flat turn would be all yaw, a 90 deg banked turn would be all pitch. A coordinated turn is a combination of both). The g in the turn comes from the pitch rate. Rolling into a turn to counteract a pitch up is the counterpoise to leveling the wings to stop a spiral. 737 MAX guys would have to roll inverted first though.

Electrical engineers use “conventional current” -flows from positive to negative. Yes, of course we know that electrons flow the other way, but the convention predates that understanding. That’s why the emitter arrow on a transistor is in the direction opposite electron flow.

Electrical term is bus. Buss is a kiss. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/buss I was admonished about this in my first engineering job out of college.

The ACU converts digital outputs from the PFD to analog for the BK autopilots and is required on all installations. The EA100 interfaces the PFD AHRS to the BK autopilot and is only required if you remove the BK vacuum AI. Both units are external to the PFD. I don’t have a EA100 but I did just have an ACU fail and I got the impression from Aspen support that failures are not uncommon. If it’s out of warranty, you might see if you can buy a used one on eBay. Aspen also has a program through dealers to exchange failed units for refurbished ones. If you do a lot of business with an avionics shop that is an Aspen dealer, I’d try to get them to do the exchange for their cost. Skip

I know there’s a line of reasoning that service bulletins are not mandatory for part 91 operators unless there is a AD, so you can save money by just saying no. But, it’s probably worth evaluating each one very carefully. Some are worth the cost (and maybe more). I’ll offer more for an airplane when the seller has complied with the service bulletins because it brings an older airframe up to date. Skip

You know how twins have twice the probability of engine failure as singles? Well, it’s like that with electronics, too. The more stuff you cram in the cockpit, the greater the likelihood that some of it will be inop. And, inop equipment messes up your workflow. There are advantages to keeping it simpler and thinking through failure modes and avoiding single point of failures that can take out multiple capabilities.

Sounds like a solid plan. Be sure to share the results. I’m curious myself.

Hmmm. It did wander a bit. So, Hank, what did you decide?: finewires or massives (or maybe BY massives)? Don’t keep us in suspense Skip