UteM20F

We were looking at a Mooney with a 20+ year old overhaul with a similar number of hours, but not recent hours. I emailed Mike Busch to get his opinion, and he responded that he would ask the seller if we could escrow the amount of an overhaul, and if the engine made metal in the first 100 hours (in the first year), have the seller pay for it. The thinking is that if the engine does well for 100 hours of recent use, it likely doesn't have corroded lobes. We went with a different Mooney. Today is the 1 year anniversary of buying it. The fact that your engine has lots of recent hours would make me comfortable with the engine. Ute

I'd love to hear what needed to be adjusted, as this sounds like the same problem we are seeing. Any more information would be greatly appreciated, as our avionics shop is clueless about this issue. Ute

We have an F with the 64 gallon bladders. They were installed in 1995. Sorry, no experience with bladder installers, as the plane is still new to us. After flying, we fill our tanks up to the tabs (20 gallons) in each wing. It is surprising how long it takes for the fuel to drain into the other bladder. Many times someone thought they had filled the tanks appropriately, then the next guy to fly complains about there not being fuel to the tabs. That is one of the reason we went with the better senders. Now we add fuel until the senders say 20 gallons in each side. And everybody is happier.

The avionics shop that did our panel added a few of these breakers, including the one for the CiES senders. We flew today and once again we didn't see the problem. I'm looking forward to finding your installation thread. I'm wondering how much extra we paid our shop for their lack of Mooney experience. Ute

Thanks for your help. I reached out to Paul at Weep No More. Turns out he co-owns a MSC, Oasis Aero in Willmar, MN, and has seen this exact issue on many Mooneys. He recommends that when I see the problem again, that I pull the circuit breaker for the CiES senders, wait for a few seconds, then reset it. He expects that this will cause the senders to report the proper amount of fuel. Paul and his partner are still trying to get answers from CiES. Ute

Thanks Marauder, The CiES web site claims these senders are Magnetic Field based while the competition and legacy senders are Capacitive, Resistive, Ultrasonic, or Reed Switch based. I admit I don't understand how it works. I'll be calling CiES myself after I research a bit more. I'll probably call Weep No More and ask if they've heard of this. It really stinks to have spent so much for accuracy and then not be able to trust what they tell me. There was no turbulence at all on the flights when the senders got stuck. Ute

Hello friends. My son, two friends, and I bought a '67 M20F a year ago. We love her! We just had a new all-Garmin panel installed and paid extra to mate the G3x with CiES fuel senders for accurate fuel levels. We have O&N bladders from 1995. We've flown for 35 hours since the panel upgrade and the levels have been spot-on except for 3 instances recently that incorrectly showed full fuel in a tank for the remainder of that flight. Once in the left tank and twice in the right tank. We sent the diagnostics file to the avionics shop and they verified that the sender reported that during the flight, the fuel level changed from about 18 gallons to 32 gallons, and stayed there. These are all brand new senders, and it has now happened on both tanks. The shop called CiES and they reported this is a known issue with certain bladders, something about the magnetism of the material that the bladder is made of reacting badly with the senders, and they get 'stuck', thinking the fuel level is full. I sent an inquiry to Griggs Aviation (they purchased O&N) and asked if they were aware of the problem. They responded this is the first they've heard about it. Have any of you seen or heard of this issue before? At this point, neither we nor the shop knows how to proceed, other than to not rely on the fuel gauges. Thanks! Ute p.s. This is my first post, but have watched every thread now for a year. I tried to find info that's already there and failed, with this being the closest thread: