R.May

I am reaching out to vintage Mack folks. We will see what happens. Also, talking to someone in Boeing and another in Pratt who are familiar with reverse engineering to see what they may be able to do. Mooney has been quiet. I will have to pick up the phone and rattle them a little for data.

Thanks for the great pic! Very deluxe with lights and wheel pants.

The donuts age on my Mite? See photo of the data I pulled from the donut. Looks to be 1984 per what you say. Pretty tired I would say.

Nice, thanks for the update on the cooling off process. I am glad someone properly looked into it. I will pass this on.

No worries, sorry. Newbee coming off too flip here. I was ribbin' when I don't even know folks yet...bad form. Good to hear about LORD. They were on my list to contact. I was going to try to put together a spec for them before approaching. May have to take an old disc and pull measurements from it. I fully intend to make a large set of these things if that is what it comes to.

So, I have a call into Don Maxwell- Waiting Emailed Boyd Maddox and Paul Workman- they do not have any leads. They are making it sound like I need to find the spec and make some. Anyone have a lead on the spec for these things?

So, wait. The parts person from LASAR got back to me and said the afformentioned kit was not for the M18. Gents, this IS the M18 Mite forum... Is what you got for the M20 perhaps? Got me all excited for a second.

-So, there is a bit of aluminum tape around the engine mount to try to protect it a little. Previous owner did that and I need to get it off for a look. Don't want corrosion starting under that tape. On the "cool down", here is my take: 1. at idle, the exhaust gas is cooler; 2. the oil in the turbo bearing is taking heat away and the heat from inside that was built up is radiating out; 3. ALWAYS, every 100hrs, take the oil return line elbow off the underside of the turbo housing and make sure there are no carbon chips clogging it up. It happened on mine. This is the smallest orifice in this line. I was doing 2-3min cool downs and got lots of chips. It got clogged...you know what happens from there... I returned to 5mins and less/no chips. Flat out, I flew two years doing the 5mins, all was well, then went to the shorter interval for a year and got chips clogging. Went back to 5mins and all is well. FYI. (if you ever have turbo problems, Gary Main at Main Turbo is great. He usually has one or two of these turbos on the shelf. They are different than the Cessna turbo in that there is a gnats hair of the turbo housing shaved off to allow it to fit within the engine mount structure.)

I second Yetti above. That exhaust needs to be looked at. Pulling the exhaust, while a supreme pain, will let you rest at ease that there are no unseen cracks elsewhere. You would be surprised... I flew (2) Rockets for work for over 1000hrs. Good plane. I assisted with lots of maintenance and worked through many issues. You MUST keep an eye on the exhaust. We would crack the cowl for a look: -within 1hr of annual maintenance or any heavy engine maintenance; and, -every 25hrs. ALWAYS be on the lookout for exhaust dust on or around the exhaust manifold. Below is one of my photos of exhaust. No dent.

M20C, nice plane. Any idea about new landing gear shock discs? I have posted a pic of N4149E on the pictures thread...or you can type the N-number into Google and there are lots of photos there. The plane was restored perhaps 15 years ago. We are annualing it now and have run into a mouse...who took a lot of insulation and ran it up into one of the left wing bays, etc. Cheers

Just bought into this Mite with a partner. We are just annualing it now. Any info on sources of landing gear parts, etc. would be great!

Hi all, i am looking for new shock disks. I have called LASAR and they are sending a retrofit kit to be able to use newer disks they sell. We will see what the looks like. I will report back. If you know of a source or where I could go to do a run of them, let me know. Rich