Dustin Kurath

Fine wires are expensive junk, both Tempest and Champion. At 600 hrs TT on a set of Tempest FW's I had an electrode fall out of one and go out the exhaust valve. The only reason to use fine wires is if your engine burns a considerable amount of oil, otherwise you're better off with massives. The big problem with FW's is that they are extremely fragile and susceptible to damage, particularly from cleaning. Mechanics don't seem to understand that they should be simply left alone, and think they need to be sandblasted. Once a fine wire is sandblasted, its scrap. All in you won't save any money and your engine won't run any better.

Were you ever able to isolate the cause of this? I have the same thing, on a relatively new aircraft. My mechanic and I have inspected everything from top to bottom and replaced both gear relays, but it still happens maybe 5% of the time where the gear takes a few seconds before it starts coming down. So far It's been an annoyance level problem and the gear has never failed to extend, but for obvious reasons I watch it closely.

You may want to call an overhaul shop. The crank, cam, fuel system, etc... may all still be salvageable. I dunno about out east, but here in the midwest we have Horizon Engines in Anoka, MN. Last winter they majored both TSIO-360 engines on my Seneca V (which I own in addition to an Ovation) and the whole process was about 4 months. One of the engines had a cracked case, and a new case from continental took about a week to get and was about $12k. They're not the cheapest shop, but the do good work and even with the case replacement I was still $15k less than a continental reman with a good core to send back. without a core you're probably looking at almost 100 grand for that factory reman. Plan on $65-$70k including the case, assuming your crank is salvageable. I had 70k I the left engine, and about 50k in the right. Another place to try is Airmark, in the past they frequently have engines in stock and do a lot of business with TSIO 360 continentals.

Might be worth checking the plugs. I had the same problem. 2 of the plugs were barely firing. Also, make sure that nobody used aluminum anti seize on the plugs. Graphite or copper is the best choice. Aluminum keeps the plugs from dissipating the heat.

Just curious, what ended up being the solution to this problem? My ovation has developed the exact same issue, left wing it sticks up about 1/4 inch when retracted. I'm torn between sending the speed brakes in to get looked at or try to have my mechanic. It has to be something simple. I have the 2000 speed brakes. 775 TTAF.

I noticed that 197CV is for sale on controller. I wonder if Mooney is planning something new? Makes me wonder what they are using as a test mule for the gross weight increase STC. https://www.controller.com/listing/for-sale/202646277/2017-mooney-m20u-ovation-ultra-piston-single-aircraft

If you want to cut and paste any of my responses here, you're more than welcome to do so. Upon seeing your post, I decided to go to the website and sign up, but am not sure when my application will be approved.

I know a few people that have an electronic mag, but not on a Mooney. The e-magger I know the best has the electroair STC on his Bonanza and has nothing but great things to say as far as fuel burn, reliability, and LOP smoothness. The reason I am holding off is because traditional magnetos overall have a great track record of reliability and safety and it's easy to find a local A&P that can diagnose or replace one if it fails. Field service I suspect would be tougher to find in the event of a problem with emags. Also, I know of no self powered electronic magnetos are yet available for certified aircraft, so if ship power fails I would automatically be down to one mag creating a secondary emergency. There are some self powered mags on the market, but they are only for experimentals. I admit that with 2 alternators and 2 batteries in my Ovation that total electrical power loss is extraordinarily unlikely, but still possible. The economics considering the fuel savings make complete sense and the 5k it costs will pay for itself twice over 2k hours even if all it saves if 1GPH, but personally I'm waiting for a complete certified dual mag, self powered replacement STC that has some history on it before switching. Call me conservative, but I'd rather be an elephant than a guinea pig.

Good questions, and I'm happy to share. I am commercial and instrument rated and have about 1300 hrs TFT. I fly an average of 300-400 hours per year. Most of my flying is within about 500 miles of my home base in Michigan, but I have flown to the northeast and pacific northwest many times as well as a few trips to Florida. I have about 450 hours in my Ovation, before which I owned a 182T for a while that I logged about 700 hours in. The rest of my experience is composed of various other Cessnas, Cirruses (maybe the correct plural term is Cirri) as well as few twins including a 55 Baron, Aztec, Seminole, and Seneca V. I mostly run rich of peak at 65-70% power in cruise unless I'm fighting strong headwinds to get somewhere, or occasionally lean of peak if I'm heavy with PAX/cargo to minimize required fuel on a long trip. On my Mooney, I like to keep CHT's 300 to 350 and peak EGT's between 1400 and 1425. I like to use 2500-2600 RPM for cruise at low altitudes, and 2400 RPM above 12K ft. When I do go LOP, I always use 20 inches of manifold pressure or less and never LOP above 12K. My 182 ran a little hotter with typical CHT's around 370 and always 50 ROP regardless of power setting. For what it's worth, I did run fine wires in my Cessna for about 300 hours with no issues before selling it, and Tempest did give me a credit through aircraft spruce for the massives that I bought to replace my fine wires and their customer service was very responsive and helpful.

There was no abnormal behavior on the engine monitor, other than a dramatic rise in EGT's when the mag finally failed. The first clue that something was wrong was an occasional bump from the engine, that became more frequent over time until it stopped when the mag finally quit. Upon inspection of the failed mag, it was discovered that the points were burned out and failed in the open position. I initially thought it was a magneto problem, but after two more identical failures including both left and right magnetos, one of which was a new mag and the other two which had been overhauled by two different shops, it meant to me that the string of in flight mag failures was a symptom rather than the root cause. I discovered the plug with the missing electrode when I decided to take a day off work and spend the day with my local A&P diagnosing and testing everything on my ignition system and replacing a 4th magneto that was beginning to show the same signs of failure at about 50 hours TTIS. The problem only manifested itself at high power settings or at high altitudes >10k ft. High outside air temps also seemed to make it worse. I firmly believe that the plug that lost an electrode was the canary in the coal mine and there were quality problems with the other plugs such as high resistance possibly due to incipient failure of the laser weld on the center electrode that show up when the plugs are very hot. From a physics standpoint this makes sense since hot metal has less electrical conductivity. Also, I have unpressurized mags and the resistance of the air inside the mags drops with increasing altitude per paschen's law, and likewise the resistance in the air in the spark plug gap increases with manifold pressure as a function of cylinder pressure. My advice to anyone who encounters this type of problem would be to turn off the mag that is failing, pull the power back a bit, and give up some altitude before the mag completely burns out. If descent is not possible because of terrain, wx, etc... and the mag completely fails, best to look for a good airport to land at because the other mag probably isn't too far behind the first one. In my case, if I had flown the last 2 hours to Seattle after my first mag failed, I'd probably have been faced with an off airport landing and in that kind of terrain with cloud obfuscation good places to deadstick into are pretty scarce and would have been tough to find.

In my experience the tempest fine wires are not been good. My ovation ultra came with them new, and I started having problems at about 500 Hrs tach time. I had a string of 4 in flight magneto failures within 75 tach hours over about 6 weeks, including one over the continental divide with mountain obfuscation. I finally pulled the plugs and found one with a missing center electrode and a few with high resistance. Pulled all 12 and replaced them with tempest massives and 2 freshly overhauled mags. No more problems now. Some people like fine wires and have good luck with them, but I can think of much cheaper things to use as fishing weights.

Overall very good luck with cabin stuff. My only gripe with the cabin is the door seal on the passenger side. It's fine when flying, but leaks a few drops if parked outside overnight in the rain. Mine is only serial number 3, so very early production for the ultra. I bought a bruce's cover for the rare times that my airplane is parked outside, so for me it's no big deal. I hope Mooney comes out with a revised door seal.

Cetainly good to get it on the ground. I am experiencing this right now with my Ovation. On the last leg of my trip to seattle this weekend, I had a mag start running rough and eventually quit over the mountains east of Seattle. I diverted to Moses Lake, had the faulty mag changed out (right mag), and took off this morning with a good working engine. An hour into the flight, the left mag started going bad on me, but did not completely fail, so I diverted to Bozeman, and am awaiting a call from the shop tomorrow. Likely I will be here for a couple of days while they install another new mag, this time on the left.

Personally I have found the best belly cleaner to be premium (no ethanol) mogas and a microfiber cloth. The gas cuts right through the oil and grease and the microfiber cloth does a great job holding on to it. I can usually do the whole belly with just one cloth.