201Steve

Chapstick

Not in love with the condition of this bird. I do not mean to sound offensive, but from the limited view, it looks like a maintenance deferred airplane that’s leaking. Not totally shocking, new gas or not.

It’s unclear if you made it in one leg?!

the firewall is a funnel that leads directly to the nose gear assembly. Could be anything. Only way you’ll find it is to clean the engine up really good and then notice it before it spreads everywhere. it’s a constant battle. That looks like a normal amount of oil for a common leak. If your oil level is about the same, probably no real worry. A little bit goes a long way. However…. I hate oil leaks and I will try my best to find them over time, but I don’t obsess about them like I used to. Sometimes it takes a lotta tries before you can pin point. If you’re not comfortable tinkering, at least try to isolate the general area it begins to accumulate anfter cleaning and then relay the findings to your mechanic.

Shocking

Also, what’s good about low time? It’s still a 50 year old airplane. The parts are just as likely to wear out on the ground than in the air (maybe more likely) after 50 years and we don’t suffer from structural fatigue like pipers. My 0.02, total time means almost nothing and it may be worse.

99/100 you get a discount when you buy the upgrades with the plane. You lose if you do it yourself. But as mentioned, how long are you going to wait? There are a lot of nice examples that you’ll never hear about bc they don’t make it to TAP etc. A couple phone calls and it’s sold. I thought I couldn’t afford one with upgrades already done. Then I did the upgrades and if I add it all up…. Doh! oh well, airplane money ain’t real money. AMU’s.

Relay(s) selector switch, or gear down limit switch (stays stuck from the last operation). Would be my order of attack. I found it helpful to get underneath with someone else working the up down on jacks and really pay attention to how well limit switches are moving. can also tap the relays but beware of a false positive, the tapping vibration could be enough to release anything in the circuit that’s sticking

For starters, use a boom cannula. It sends the main o2 line off the back of your headset instead of from your chest. It certainly feels less cluttered that way.

Sure, but it’s pretty hot air. As it seems to be more vulnerable to certain AC (running common engines) I guess it has a good deal to do with how the breather is routed, diameter, the heat presence at the location near the end of the tube, etc. I couldn’t find the Lake AD from my phone to see what they found.

Only 180 knots cruise? I thought it was faster than that. Maybe the guy didn’t fly it high?

I don’t think I’d call that a seal. This is more of a cap. Tail moves in trim, your not sealing anything except capping the edge and I’m not even sure why that would matter.

Interesting…. So the pipers were prone to it and the other was an AD situation. By the first write up it sounds like it insinuates that the ice forms from moisture escaping from inside the engine. That is wild. It’s really hot air from the start and then freezes by the time it gets toward the end of the tube. I wonder what makes a certain aircraft more prone to it than others. I would have guessed rather that it accumulated from icing conditions outside, and just accumulated on the tip of the breather.

I’ve offered to sell it to him, I’ve been waiting by the mailbox for a big check!

True true true. He’s honorable mention here but the true star of the show.

I mean…. If you somehow manage to tow your plane out of the hangar and drag a plugged in black max, and it stays attached… that would be more unlikely than an iced up breather. any accident reports that cites a frozen over breather tube?

Best way to know is pull the cowling and check. Mine for example, someone drilled like 3 holes. if yours is the can opener style cutout as described above, it’s possible depending on how it’s notched, that it’ll rip the foam seals on the black max adapter. you can purchase a medical style catheter from them, designed to slip past that notch and then the tip inflates above it. It’s well documented in the COPA forums if there’s any confusion.

Introducing, just back from a full strip and paint, the best looking Mooney in the fleet! design: scheme designers paint: Hawk Sherwin Williams Nordic gray & Egyptian blue

Exactly. The regs, the case law, precedent are nothing but a giant contradiction that you can weave an explanation out of 6 ways from Sunday just like what’s going on here. Rosen sun visors. Hahahaha. Exactly. The regs give us enough leeway to keep our airplanes flying. It’s the arm chair pontificators that keep them grounded. If a sound argument can be made, we should normalize that flexibility instead of self imposing it to be taboo. Still waiting on someone to show me a single example of someone being enforced upon that made sound judgement with fair regulatory citation. Even the idiot David Jewell who pencil whips engine overhauls isn’t being enforced upon and he’s an EGREGIOUS example of taking the loosest possible interpretation of the regs. He built me a motor, handed it back to me with a log entry that said OVERHAULED. no tags, no part list, no inspection reports, no receipts, no 8130s, no nothing whatsoever. “Over-fn-hauled. Sincerely, David Jewell”. So, there are professionals doing extremely idiotic things on a regular basis, you couldn’t beg the FAA to do anything about, and here we are wondering if it’ll be OK to use a new switch or should we use a piece of junk switch out of a wrecked airplane not knowing if it’s ok or not. It’s crazy.

In a pinch, a carriage bolt with washers will work.

Right near the gear actuator. Almost directly under the front seats. The main gear pushrod tube. Paddles on it. Switches on each side. One for up, one for down. It was the up switch in question here.

I’ve yet to find a single story of an IA being brought to justice for something like this. It doesn’t happen. Yet people act like they are about to get slapped into handcuffs at any moment. Hell, you can’t even hold a mechanic legally accountable if you wanted to. It must be the pet project of an individual enforcer and even then, never heard of a single citation.

Any ia that would raise a fuss over a previously installed Pma switch by a previous A&P, simply bc it wasn’t the original part number and for no other sound logical reason, is an IA that would never touch my airplane again. Can not stand some of the idiotic interpretations that get raised by some mechanics trying to raise questions of intricate legal interpretation for something as simple as an electrical switch (Where none of said switches were ever PMA parts to begin with). Enter the lightbulb discussion. Lol