Utah20Gflyer

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.

I’m going to get in the wild side here and suggest an owner produced part? Take off the old one and take it to a machine shop and ask them if they can fabricate a new one minus all the wear.

I suspect this is a bot or a person who doesn’t speak English as a first language. Really tough post to read. My advice….. Doing your PPL in a Mooney, any Mooney but especially a later turbo Mooney is a terrible idea. You will have more than enough to deal with using a trainer and the extra complexity is going to make the learning process drag out much longer than it needs to. In fact I don’t think a person should even consider buying any plane until after their PPL. Airplane ownership is a part time job and will take a lot of time away from training. There is a high likelihood your training will take much longer than if you just rent. It’s very unlikely you will save any money owning versus renting. You don’t buy a plane to pay less. You buy a plane for control and access. Good luck!

Yeah, big difference between 96 hours one year and then sitting 8 years vs 12 hours a year for 8 years. Neither is good but I’d prefer the 12 hours a year. At least then the engine would occasionally be coated with some oil.

Nothing in the logs? Or no logbooks at all? What exactly are we talking about here?

Unless you can do all of the work yourself and don’t mind spending the time to do it the Brittian system is not going to be cheap to fix. It would be more cost effective I think to install the Aerocruze auto pilot. I worked on my PC system some when I first bought my plane but kept having problems and eventually ripped out everything including the vacuum system. The PC systems in our planes are 50+ years old, if you want it to work properly it’s probably going to require replacing and rebuilding everything in the system. Not worth it in my opinion. If I had a system that worked I’d run it until it stopped working but not worth the investment in time and money to rebuild it. A Mooney flys great without an autopilot. I’d say as good or better than any other light airplane. That being said I’d still like one and plan on getting one in the next couple of years.

I’ve also done the electric conversion after I removed my vacuum system. Works great!

The data plate on my G is in the front air inlet as well. Never even considered that it could be an issue.

LOL! Yeah, I was always pretty borderline on CB status. My maintenance philosophy is I want to spend the minimum I can to have a very useful and reliable airplane. I save enough doing owner assisted annuals and working with my mechanic on repairs that I can throw parts at the plane and occasionally buy a couple pieces of expensive hardware and it doesn’t bust the budget. In my opinion it’s paying the mechanic 125 dollars to install that 100 dollar hardware that’s the bigger kick in the financial crotch.

I just bought a whole bunch of hardware from Aircraft spruce for 30 dollars - a small box worth. Yes, occasionally a piece of hardware will be expensive but for the most part it really isn’t bad. Let’s not get melodramatic about it. I’ve spent well into six figures on my plane over 4 years but only spent a couple hundred dollars on “expensive” hardware. It’s just not a significant part of the cost of ownership.

“I was under the impression you were a premier Mooney shop” could very easily come across as snarky if said with elevated emotions. Have you considered that you could have contributed significantly to how the phone call went? I’m not implying Don (who I’ve never met) reacted correctly, but you can’t control what other people do, only what you do. Maybe you needed a cooling off period before having that conversation. You need to accept personal responsibility for how this all went down. Did you vet this shop before you put your plane in their care or did you just assume because other people said it was a good shop that it was the right shop for you? Did you discuss expectations for communication? Did you ask to talk with the mechanic who was going to be doing the work on your plane beforehand? Did you discuss what the procedure was for shop caused damage? Did you discuss how decisions were going to be made on what was going to be fixed and how pricing was going to be communicated. In other words Don did not just do this to you. You are a co creator of this scenario. If I asked to talk to the A&P before they worked on the plane and they said “sorry, you can’t talk to them directly” Do you think I would ever put my plane in that shop in a million years…. No, there is no way. If you think this just happened to you, then it will keep happening to you. I say this with a genuine desire to help you, I hope it came across that way.

When you say your spring is worn are you taking about the spring not pulling the handle back because it has lost its springyness? Or are you referring to the cosmetics? If it’s the springyness it could be the spring is worn out or the whole assembly needs to taken apart, cleaned up, lubed and reassembled. IE too much resistance in the assembly for the spring to work properly. If the issue is cosmetic then I would say clean it up and put it back in. You can’t even see that spring under normal conditions. I’m not even sure if I have one or not.

I’m sure the 330 has the same timer as the 327. It really is the best aviation timer I’ve ever used. Try it out next time you get up in the air and see what you think. I’ve tried using the timer on the GPS and my I pad but it just takes too long to get to it and set it up. Also it takes those two devices away from how I want to be using them. The timer on the Transponder is basically stand alone and takes maybe two button touches to get it ready. Starts with one touch, stops with one touch, resets with one touch. It’s perfect!

I get my time from the clock in the gps (Garmin 355) which has hours and minutes and then use the timer on my Garmin 327 transponder for seconds - timing holds, etc. I used to have a LC2 but found it to be very user unfriendly and got rid of it. So essentially I’m splitting the requirement over two devices. I feel like this works because the GPS is what you use for release times and ATC reporting and they don’t want to hear about seconds. The timer on the transponder is really simple and user friendly. Until someone convinces me otherwise I think this fulfills the legal requirement.

Personally I wouldn’t try to figure out which cylinder(maybe two) is the weakest link and try a repair and see how that affects the overall situation. A lot of the oil consumption issue could be cause by one or two of the cylinders. A top overhaul might be euthanizing a bunch of cylinders that still have life in them. I don’t think compression in the 50s is necessarily a big issue by itself but a quart in 3 hours is fairly high oil usage. I’d consider it time to start doing something. If you just want to be done with it and can actually get the cylinders you could just write a big check. I would do the incremental approach. But that’s just my preference.

Personally I prefer to work WITH the mechanic to maintain my plane. That way I always know what’s going on and get to be involved with the minutiae of what is happening. There are lots of things that come up and decisions that are made. I like having an experienced mechanic there to bounce questions off of and help make the right decision. I did the engine portion of my annual a week ago and there were literally dozens of things we talked about as we worked and that is something you can never get if you drop off the plane and pick it up when it’s done. Even if the mechanic is the best communicator in the world you won’t get 1/10th of what happened when you weren’t around. Some might not have this arrangement available, some might not want it even if they could have it. Personally I wouldn’t want anything else. As to Don and his shop, I have zero personal experience. Seems like he does a lot for the community which I appreciate. Sounds like most of the complaints revolve around communication about a conflict. Maybe that isn’t Don’s strength? That doesn’t make him a bad guy or his shop a bad shop, that means that could be one of the limitations if you use them. Every shop is going to have its strengths and weaknesses.

I thought I saw news that gear production was resuming. I’m unsure of the timeline but replacements should be available in the near future.

My plane is missing the trim jackscrew boot. I’ve considered replacing it but have subsequently decided I don’t think it is worth it. The jack screw is already in an enclosed area and gets cleaned and lubricated at least once a year. Additionally as has been brought up already it does make it more difficult to service the mechanism with the boot in place. Weighing the benefits and drawbacks I don’t see a compelling reason to replace it.

I try to lube the flight controls every 30-60 days. Basically if I’m doing my preflight and I’m not in a hurry I’ll grab the spray can I keep in the plane and hit everything that is accessible without unscrewing things. My understanding was that Triflow is the correct lubricant.

I get a tick from my strobes but I can’t hear it when the engine is running so not an issue at this point.