Utah20Gflyer

I have a 68 G model with strobes only.

I think the best thing you can do to keep annuals reasonable is to fix things as they come up rather than deferring things to the annual. Either way you are going to spend a fair amount of time maintaining your airplane. So work on your plane a little all year round or a lot for a couple weeks. That being said my mechanic and I always find a few things that need attention during the annual. If that thing requires a hard to get part then you get the dreaded long annual. There is no getting around that. It’s just baked into the process. My annuals range from 2 days to over 3 months. On a more annoying technical note the annual inspection only includes the actual inspection. That should be a concise activity. You can have the inspection and have the IA immediately sign off the Annual with discrepancies. You wouldn’t be airworthy but you would be done with your annual inspection. So really an annual inspection should only take a couple days no matter how bad the condition of the airplane is. I get this isn’t how most people go through the practice - but I feel like being that guy today.

Sharp edges tend to propagate cracks so bevel all of the edges - holes and circumference. Eventually it will crack as it ages but it will reduce the likelihood of cracks. I also made my own from Lexan (Polycarbonate). I used my old one as the template. It was a very easy job.

Wow, this is quite the situation. rockers arms are damaged ? pushrods are all bent? pushrods that came out won’t go back in? you are being told the case has been milled beyond limits but the accessory case still fits? but the engine ran like that for 800 hours? I would say the next step is certainly a second opinion. No knock on the current mechanic but the confusion seems to be multiplying. I think an engine shop like you are talking about is a great idea.

My mechanic and I usually do my annual in two days with both of us working and a third guy popping in for a couple hours. This can work out fine but there is always the chance you may need parts that you may not have on hand. My first annual took 3 months. So you never really know. Personally I wouldn’t try to make any plans until the plane is done with the annual and ready to fly again.

The parts manual for our G model Mooneys show the Prestolite ALY-8403 as being the alternator originally installed. Hartzell says the current part number they are selling for our plane is ALX-8521 A standard alternator looks like this which is quite different than what you have installed. Im feeling pretty confident the alternator installed is not the right manufacturer. It looks as though the other companies like plane power are selling the same prestolite alternator under their own label, so unless there is a STC I haven’t come across then that doesn’t look like a proper alternator. Whoever put that 90 dollar rebuilt alternator in your plane should be nominated for king of the cheap bastards (also known as CBs on the forum).

It’s very likely that the alternator is not an aviation specific unit. The reason is not that the STC holder doesn’t use an alternator from Carquest. The reason is that they charge 3x the price to remove the carquest sticker and apply their sticker. Look in your logbook and see if you can find a logbook entry saying when that alternator was installed. Also look for any STCs for alternator conversion. You’ll probably just have to spring for an approved alternator and a little labor to swap them. It would probably be good to have the new alternator in hand before the mechanic starts looking for brackets. Could be an alternator issue rather than a bracket issue that is causing the misalignment.

When I pulled a cylinder on my engine to replace a broken stud I definitely noticed that it was much more difficult to get the rockers back in. This concerned me at the time but the mechanic said as long as we put everything back the way it came out there is nothing to worry about with it being really tight. If the pushrods really were that out of spec then the valves would never close and you would have zero compression. Given the engine was running fine previously I think that mechanic should follow my mechanics advice and put everything back together the way it came apart.

First, I’m very sorry you have had such an unpleasant and stressful buying experience. That really sucks! As others have said it doesn’t sound like a strong case. You don’t know what was on that missing page or if there was nothing at all. A good case for fraud would be an entry describing significant work that was never actually done, for instance a pencil whipped engine overhaul. I also own a G model Mooney. Feel free to reach out if you have any G specific questions. I’ve really enjoyed my Mooney the last 4 years, they are great planes. What part of the country do you live in?

If it were me I wouldn’t worry about it. A quart in 18 hours is below average but not crazy low. Besides, what would you do about it anyway? I’ve never heard of a maintenance technique to increase oil consumption.

I bought mine off a local classified ad site called KSL.com. Similar to craiglist. I’d check whatever you have in your area and see if you can pick up a used one. I paid 400 for a Inogen G3 and then spent another 100 replacing the cylinders in it a couple months later. There are lots of people who want to sell them after their parent passes or they upgrade or get over something like Covid. Performance is very close to the G5 at a fraction of the cost.

You would need a 2nd STC that allows for the conversion and would include a revision of the owners manual converting all the old numbers to knots. Ultimately does it really matter? You fly the plane by the numbers. Seems immaterial if those numbers represent statute miles or knots?

I have an Inogen G3 and really like it. I almost always use it now for cross country flights. Unless I had a turbocharged aircraft I don’t think I would ever choose a bottle over the oxygen concentrator.

Good point, Here at Mooneyspace we only responsibly fire out guns in the air!

There have been a few times when I’ve bought new parts that were defective. I would check the temp sensor for normal operation using a heated liquid and another thermostat. It’s probably fine but just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s good.

I think it is unlikely. The oil cooler is just some passages with cooling fins attached. I don’t think which way the oil flows matters. I’d de cowl and take a look at things anyway. It’s always a good idea to double check things and make sure everything is in its place. Kinking an oil line because things are hooked up backwards could definitely reduce flow but I’d be surprised if that happened. There is more friction during break in which equates to more heat. How many hours since the field overhaul?

Lots of companies talk about getting their engines certified but it’s an easy thing to talk about and a very difficult thing to do in practice. Even if it were certified right now it would still be a long time before it made it into an actual airframe. Best case scenario one of these engines makes it into a certified airplane about the time I’m aging out of flying. So meh!

After a while you look like this and raising the gear gets really easy

I recently removed and reinstalled a cylinder to repair a broken cylinder hold down stud. When the mechanic and I reinstalled the cylinder we applied torque seal to each nut as it was torqued to spec. Now whenever I have a part of the cowl off I can visually inspect the hardware to confirm nothing has lost torque. The hardware loosing torque is the big risk in doing cylinder work so this seems like extremely cheap insurance. I’d imagine lots of others are doing this already but thought I’d mention it because it is great for piece of mind. Without torque seal that nut that should be at 50 ft lbs looks exactly the same at 50 ft lbs as it does 10 ft lbs.

I wonder why it had a major engine overhaul at 600 hours? That seems really early. Depending on how the compression check was done the low numbers could be a result of the engine not being properly warmed up right before the test. Also compression is only one factor in determining the health of a cylinder. Cylinders in the 60s with normal oil consumption wouldn’t bother me at all. Not even a little bit. I’d want to do my own compression test with the engine warm and then bore scope the cylinders. Oil consumption can be difficult to determine objectively unless the owner tracks adding oil between oil changes like I do. I’d ask if he has records of that.

I have a Garmin 355 and 255. That gives me two coms , waas gps, VOR and GS. Everything I need and nothing extra. Because GPS can go down I want ground based legacy nav for redundancy. I tend to just use the GPS and have never actually needed the legacy stuff but I like it for training and there are still a lot of approaches that require it. You are going to really limit your training with no nav radio.

I’d probably pay the bill and move on. It’s not that much money and unless you want to spend much much more out of pure principle to make someone do what’s right then it’s just going to waste more time and mental energy. That many mistakes is not acceptable and is a real safety issue. You could have lost your airplane to an accident or even died. Not trying to be melodramatic, just want to further impress upon you how risky flying the plane with that many issues was. So certainly don’t go back to that mechanic. One minor thing I could overlook but that was some egregious incompetence. My feedback for you would be de-cowl and inspect your engine after an annual. You could have caught some things before you flew it. I wouldn’t trust even a very good mechanic that much. Even very thorough mechanics can miss things and another set of wyes can catch things. Sorry you had such a bad experience.

To me the first picture looks like there is debris in the hole. Can the seller investigate and clean out any debris and test?

I was making a technical point about the duties of a safety pilot and clarifying they are not just a passenger, not justifying tampering with equipment without notice.

While I agree with the idea that it isn’t the place of a safety pilot to unexpectedly fail systems I would also like to make the point that a safety pilot IS NOT a passenger, they are a required crew member while the other pilot is under the hood and have certain duties that must be performed for the safety of the flight. It is always a good idea to have a conversation about these duties and what the expectations are before the commencement of the flight. I would expect everyone involved to confirm to those expectations. Failure to conform would be a serious issue for me.