1980Mooney

@M20GforMe - as a new owner you are "drinking from a firehose" right now. I can tell from your quote for the Annual that you are using Coletti Aviation at KLOT. Mooney M20 Annual Inspection | COLETTI AVIATION There aren't any PIREP's on Coletti on either Mooneyspace or Beechtalk so it is hard to say anything about their experience, but their pricing seems to be pretty transparent. Maintenance | COLETTI AVIATION Looking at your list, there are some things that another A&P (actually it is the IA) "might" let you "kick the can down the road", but it can be "pay me now or pay me a lot more later". For instance, it appears there is corrosion on the steel tubular fuselage cage - 4.5 shop hours to address it. You definitely want to do it. Then there is the corrosion on the Push/Pull control tubes. I had the same issue when I changed A&P - the old one signed off on the surface corrosion, but the new one would not. In the end it was better to stop the corrosion sooner rather than later. You might be able to spread some of this out over future Annuals but spending more money to put your plane back together, fly to another A&P, pay them to undo your plane again - and then perhaps write up the same list of discrepancies becomes a real money loser. Read this article by Mike Bush - others have referenced Mike Bush who is "Savvy Aviation" EAA_2011-05_is-it-safe-is-it-airworthy.pdf

Perhaps you did not see that the shop found corrosion on the engine mount and prescribed Corrective Action of "Strip down, clean and paint to prevent reoccurrence". If you are having the engine pulled (for issues you highlight) and if they are removing the engine mount frame, then it would be really cheap/"penny wise" to not replace the Lord or Barry mounts at the time. @M20GforMe - corrosion allowance is only 10%. I don't know your mount tubular dimensions, but it might only be 0.035- 0.065 inch thick. That means that corrosion of only 0.004 - 0.006 inches renders it unairworthy. That could be one thick hairs width. Then you get into welding it. It would be best to address it while the engine is out. Otherwise the cost becomes huge if you have to do it in the future.

Please don't scare/mislead a new owner - that is classic Mooney CB. @M20GforMe (CB is "cheap bastard" in Mooney-speak). No shop is going to give you a discount if they have a mechanic in training working on your plane. The shop rate is the shop rate.

Can you elaborate? On Steel fuselage frame, engine mount, landing gear members, control rods? Structural aluminum inside the wings? Filaform?

You didn’t mention if there were any events prior to finding this: - How long/flight hours ago did you or partner last record tighter/normal spreads? - Was any work done on the engine recently or recent Annual prior to discovering the high spread?

The dive shops I go to in the Houston area have pure oxygen.

Absolutely correct. @highflyer77 there was a recent topic about Monroy tanks and @Pinecone commented: "If you fill main with aux empty, fuel starts moving into aux. So when you stop filling main and put on the cap, the level in the main is still going down. So you fill the aux, but the main is not full, so the level in the aux goes down and leaves you short of full. Filling aux first means fuel is moving from aux to main. Then you fill the main, which reduces flow from aux to main. So you then top the aux after doing the same to the other side and you are much closer to full." The shop that did the W&B had no way to accurately know how much fuel that you had in the tanks to start with - and they had no way of knowing if they actually filled the Monroy and Mains all the way to "Full Fuel".

"hot summer months"....I see that you are near Boise, Idaho. "hot"?....seriously?? I noticed that your 9 day forecast shows that the Low will be 49 F and the High with be 71 F. And I see that your current Relative Humidity is 18% right now with a High that might touch 86. Here near the Gulf Coast the High is in the 90's and the Low generally is about 75 F. Earlier this week the Low was 81 F. Relative Humidity was 99-100% this morning. Even in the 90's F, the relative humidity never gets below 65%. It gets really "fun" when the Tower tells you to hold for release, or if there is a lot of landing traffic. We would KILL for your "hot summer" flying weather.

Go to a dive shop. Easy and cheap.

I’m not sure if I follow your point. Swift also requires that you pay for an STC to use their fuel. And the economic reality is that, because AVGAS consumption is so low, virtually all but the busiest airports have only one supplier of AVGAS. - Daily deliveries of all grades of AVGAS average slightly over 400,000 gallon per day NATIONWIDE. - There are about 5,000 public airports and 14,000 private airstrips. - Just considering the public airports, that is ONLY 80 gallons per day per airport on average. Gas/connivence store sell more beer than that per day. Grocery stores sell more milk than that per day. You may want market competition but the market reality does not support it. The Govt doesn’t have anything to do with it.

What conversion? A bit more information would be helpful for anyone to answer.

This is how Maxwell does it... (that is the Predator he recovered to restore) The last thing that you want to do is separate the wing from the steel frame/cage.

Talking about a specific location is meaningless. Look at the big picture. Globally, 1,500 SEP were built/sold in all of 2024 and only 317 in Q1 of 2025. Yes there are some homebuilts but they do not meaningfully replace certified aircraft - either in mission or life of use. But the number of GA that are crashed or just rot away every year exceeds the number coming into the market. The cost of purchasing and owning/maintaining a GA SEP is rising faster than inflation. Look at the price increases at Lycoming - or anything that Hartzell/Arcline Capital owns...or any other aviation supplier scooped up by Private Equity - up 50% over the last couple years. You have to practically be a millionaire to acquire a new Cirrus. Mooney went out of new aircraft business 6 years ago because they were "only" charging $700,000 and $800,000 for their 2 base models and could not make a go of it. This will not drive growth. At best GA piston may flatline.

Also it depends upon your model and location. Are you in the US or outside? There are comments that "the factory is making parts". Definitely not all parts and not full support for all models. And then some parts are sourced by Mooney Corp from third parties through exclusivity contracts. Things as simple at the mechanical wing fuel level gauge dials can only be purchased by Mooney and not owners directly from the manufacturer. The problem is that Mooney doesn't have enough money to order third party parts in quantity for inventory or for MSC's. Here is a critical intake boot on an E that has a 35 week lead time after 10 orders have been received....

Yes I understand that - I am using the word figuratively but the aft of the plane has to be removed. It is a major event - all the wiring going to the tail which includes power and any remote avionics like autopilot has to be pulled, control rods, etc in addition to drilling out all the rivets. Then it all has to be reassembled - and that sum total work is in addition to actually repairing the plane. What a PITA.

I think that you are talking about Pippen-York Avionics. But I don't think that they will be much help in pulling the TIO-540 to send it out for the prop strike AD/Inspection or replacing the prop in order to get it into shape to ferry it somewhere. The alternative would be to cut the fuselage behind the back seats and put it on a truck/trailer.

T82. Not TX82. It’s 5,002 ft X 75 ft asphalt.

Except that he departed from San Marcos and geared it up about 85 miles away at T82 -Fredericksburg. Other than the Hangar Hotel, there isn’t much at T82.

Texas Air Salvage has a 40-87 nose wheel off of a Beech Duchess https://www.texasairsalvage.com/main_view.php?editid1=296470

It looks like Texas Air Salvage has a pair of the Lasar Comb- tiedown/jack points that actually came off of an M20E… https://www.texasairsalvage.com/main_view.php?editid1=296005

Here is a pragmatic article on the Manual (Johnson bar) gear from KNR Shoptalk https://www.knr-inc.com/shoptalk-articles.html?view=article&id=41&catid=25

I have used these for 25+ years. I leave them on. The space for a tie down chain is tighter than the standard rings but I like it. https://lasar.com/tie-downs/tie-down-jack-point-combo-ss-tie-down-wing Standard jack pads/points https://lasar.com/tie-downs/jack-point-010000-000

Manual or electric (Dukes actuator) landing gear?

Oops….that was the title of the topic. My bad.