Austintatious

Thank you!

OK, I am on a mission... The reason is of little consequence, but lets just say that I want every bit of speed and efficiency the airplanes can get and AFAIK, you cant just go removing parts off an airplane without a CDL... So I want the parts that are supposed to be on my airplane to be on my airplane. Both our M20K rockets at one point, FOR SURE had the plastic fairings behind the main gear wells. I know this two ways... On one of them, I WATCHED as the mechanic removed the broken and shattered ones AND the rivet holes are still there . On the other, The holes for the rivets are present in the shape of the fairing flange. Now, As I understand it, there would be no reason for these fairings to be installed if there were no smaller inner gear doors installed, as it is the small inner gear doors that actually fair up against the aft fairing. So, that brings me to those inner gear doors. I can find NO reference to an M20K of the 231 variety having those smaller inner gear doors. The ones that attach just outboard of the tire... I cannot find part numbers for these doors. I cannot find diagrams for the MOUNTING hardware for these doors. So, Before I go bugging people that are trying to work for a living and pay their bills, can anyone send me in the right direction to get my hands on these doors AND the mounting hardware for them? This is for an M20K (NOT J) a 231.... the 252 is completely different.

Haha... I Could write a book.... My company G650 has been in the shop at Gulf stream undergoing yearly maintenance. I go to pick it up and like a good little pilot, I do a thorough pre-flight. First catch is that whoever reinstalled the Radar altimeter decided to put blobs of fairing compound or whatever they put over the fasteners but never shaved them flush like they are supposed to be before painting over the blobs.... Other antennas (all were removed as part of the work) had big globs of painted pookey all around them as well. No attention to detail. Then as I do the interior portion of the preflight, I find the brakes are acting up... turns out, despite opening up the brake system, they never bothered to bleed the brakes and the system was quite full of air... The only clue was when I charged the accumulator, the pressure stopped rising and even fell a few hundred PSI... It is only because I was paying really close attention to everything that it was even discovered. THEN on top of that... literally a few days later, the line workers backed a Falcons Elevator into our winglet!!! This is insane, but somehow, all they did was scuff the paint on the TE of our winglet. The falcon looked worse off, but still possibly just a paint ding, They had not examined it yet when I was told. ( I was no where near that event!) I have been thinking a lot about this stuff lately, probably because of my annual and me revisiting this thread... I know there are good mechanics/shops out there... In fact, I believe most of them are probably actually very good. I think the issue has got to be that they just don't really care to give the attention to detail. The focus is on buttoning up the job and going on to the next one to make the money. And I get that. Paying attention to detail takes time... which means you have to charge the customer more... And most of the time slapping it altogether quickly probably works out... if only 1 out of 10 times you have to double back to work on something again because it got done improperly then you are ahead of the game. And for that to happen, the mistake has to be bad enough to be blatantly obvious, OR the pilot/owner has to be paying really close attention if it isn't. I am still left wondering... Is this chain of issues my fault for not being involved enough? Is it just a string of bad luck? Or is it that these sort of mistakes happen often but simply go unnoticed by most people? Or is it some combination of all of the above?

Yes... bingo... It would be better if the shop was near me.

They do them on 5th Saturdays... not sure when the next one is. https://www.cleburne.net/Calendar.aspx?EID=11106

Yes, I used the same shop... We had not intended to do so, but circumstances pushed us towards doing it there. The convenience outweighed the other considerations. This is not a fly by night shop.... I think most of the issues are in fact due to them having high demand. And Believe me, I agree with you... I was not at all happy with my partner not seeing the missing panel. It in fact plays part in my frustration with feeling like if I don't have my sleeves rolled up and do it all myself, stuff goes wrong. It is HIS airplane too FFS. As far as the squawks go None of my squawks were airworthiness items. The fuel indicating system is working, its just that I dont trust it given I saw what appeared to be a stuck float or some other anomaly, because it appears to function about as good at you can expect those older systems to 99% Of the time... I just had that one time and started thinking maybe there is something that could be looked at with scheduled downtime. The AP has also been temperamental ( it works, just have to finesse it on occasion)and wanted to get a look at it too. And a few of the instrument panel lights are dim... So, after weeks of downtime, sure, my partner could have not accepted the aircraft and us been without it for who knows how long... Obviously the shop didn't care to do any of that work... Why would I keep it with them even longer after they demonstrate this... after they clearly misled me that they would make time. IDK if that is what you are missing and things make more sense to you now... Obviously I cannot type out all of the details here... Seems like you are trying to suggest this is really the fault of myself... and I cannot disagree with that. It is my fault I used the shop again. It is my fault that I dont go stay 2 weeks in timbucktoo to oversee all the work... It is my fault I have decided to remain in the certified world even though the maintenance situation for me has been untenable. You are completely correct.... And for me, the only solution I see is to get away from the certified world.... And believe me, I am working on it.

Plane is at KFTW... I fly professionally out of KDAL. I looked up SWTA.... they may be a real option for me! I go to Rockport regularly and they are on the way. Not really much more logistically sensible than Maxwell though... I will keep them in mind, thank you. Do you ever go to the Cleburne breakfast fly ins?

DFW We have decided to just take our aircraft to Maxwell in Longview from now on.

Uhh, yes, quite sure.... There DEFINITELY was a loss of power coupled with a stuttering and the highest I saw the fuel flow was over 40 GPH. That was in the winter in very cold temps. In summer the flow would go to about 36 GPH when it was supposed to be 32. Backing off full power to 35" reduced the flow to normal and all was fine, still plenty of climb power at 35"

I considered this... we checked to see that they did not mix up the cylinders for the injectors last time around, but I have not checked it for this time... I am close to an oil change and will do it then. You make a good point about being specific. The reason I was having them adjust the fuel was because at WOT the fuel flow was going so high the mixture was getting rich enough to cause misfires ... I would have to back out of the throttle to stop it... Which wasn't a big deal, I would just go to 35/25 pretty quickly after T/O, mostly a problem in very cold weather, not so much in the hot weather. That was the issue I told them about since we are about to be in the cold.... I didn't mention trying to keep it rich to have it run cool because that was not the issue. I am about convinced there is something else happening in my fuel system that is causing the #5 to run lean. Perhaps contamination in the fuel manifold or the number 5 fuel line. I have had gami adjust the number 5 injector 2 or 3 times, each time trying to cause 5 to peak later than the other cylinders, but still number 5 is peaking 1st or second. I did the Savvy thing a while back. I did not find it terribly helpful other than their pre-buy assistance program. They seem to have a lot of experience with Cirrus and I have no doubt that they are worth their weight in gold for those who own a cirrus.

Going through the annual "mess up a good airplane" routine again..... So I thought I would document it here so all yall can chuckle at my apparent bad luck. Plane went for annual, was doing very well overall... Shop was asked to perform an annual and address a few minor squawks... In fact, before even sending it to them I SPECIFICALLY asked if they would be able to take the time to address the squawks and extra work which consisted of a few instrument lights being out. I also asked them to THOROUGHLY vet/adjust the fuel flows and to inspect the fuel indicating system as a tank ran out on me with about 8 gallons still showing on the gauge... Well, the shop failed to address my squawks or inspect the fuel indicating system... they simply didn't do it. They adjusted the fuel flows and it is now very strange, something is wrong... I don't believe that it is a danger but it just isn't right and on top of that, whatever they did now has the #5 once again running hotter than it ever has after all the effort I went through with GAMI to get it under control. I have no idea what they could have done to cause this, but I do know that it is a drastic difference from when it went in. Before I would see maybe 390 degrees when climbing out and would run about 370 in cruise... Now I am seeing 410 degrees (470 is redline) in climb and about 390 in level flight... Furthermore, I cant lean... that is to say, with the mixture knob all the way in for the climb, when I reduce the throttle and the RPM, the fuel flow is already where it is supposed to be... I used to have to back it down about 3-5 GPH to bring it to what it should be. And, as a nice little bonus... the cherry on top of the miserable maintenance crap pie I have swallowed all but 1 annual since owning this aircraft... They forgot to re-install an inspection panel. The other owner accepted it from the shop, didn't catch it and then brought the plane to me... I accepted it and did normal pre-flights. Flew it a few times and then when I went under the aircraft to tie it down I see the missing panel underneath the wing next to the gear door. Shop cant find it, says "it may have been stolen"..... If that happened, it was a polite thief because they put the panel screws back in without the panel there. I'm close to being able to bail on the certified world and go experimental... real close and I cant wait. I am tired of people taking my money to mess up my aircraft.

In a nutshell, as far down the line as possible before the injectors. In my other aircraft, I have 2 inline filters right before the carbs and a third filter as the fuel comes out of the tank. They all get changed every annual and they filter down to the micron level.

Wow, that seems like pure insanity.

Well, I am confused on this too... I know there are screens, but during test runs after an annual we found a completely clogged injector... Given how small the orifices are I cannot imagine there is not a pleated fuel filter in this system somewhere... For crying out loud, we have that on even the crummiest boat engine setup.

I'm not sure why the most simple of questions is so difficult to find answers to sometimes, so I'll bug all of you! There is 0 mention of fuel filters in the M20k manual. 0 search results for "fuel filter" here on mooney space. A google search for "Mooney fuel filter" yields a ton of results for OIL filters..... I simply want to know how often the Fuel filter needs to be changed... I assumed it was to be done every annual, but I am not sure the shop did so. 84 M20k Rocket