StevenF

Bit of feedback just to let everyone who helpfully suggested know. The mounts were shot and replaced at the annual, and testing indicates with ceramic polish and the engine pointing the right way we have gained 7 or 8 knots at high speed cruise. We're still down a few on where we think it should be, but we have a Hartzel prop that is end of life and we think that's costing us 5 knots, and has been disappointing since it was fitted years ago. We are considering replacing with either the original spec McCauley, or possibly the MT 3 blade which we've heard good things about. Anyone got any thoughts to share on MT versus the standard Mac? We have a healthy debate going on that Mooney would have fitted whatever was best at the time, however things have moved on in the last 40 years, and we've heard amazing stories about performance with the MT fitted to a J.

Really helpful information, thanks for this. I would hope our shop knows, but it's worth checking. Appreciate it.

Thanks everyone! Most enlightening and helpful. We now have a basis to have a talk to our Maintenance Organisation. Cheers!

I wanted to see if anyone had a view on the rather strange angle we seem to have on our M20J engine. My co-owner and I were standing looking at her yesterday and it suddenly occurred to me that our prop wasn't aligned to the cowling, and appears to have about an inch of droop. The cowling doesn't appear to be obviously misaligned at the firewall end. My immediate suspicion is that the engine-mounts have sagged or are not set correctly somehow? We've been noticing our speed has been deteriorating over a period of years and put that down to a tired engine that's approaching TBO, but perhaps that isn't the case after all? We also then had a good look over and noted that our ailerons both appear (when centred) to be "low" by about 1/2" against the tips, but roughly in line with the flaps. If one is centred, the other is approximately 1 inch below the natural location on the tip fairing. Also, when the end of the aileron is aligned to the tip fairing, it sits about 3/4 inch above the flap? Is it possible we're rigged wrongly? Being in the UK the shops see very few Mooney's so I wanted to see what wisdom the crowd could offer on this before discussing it with our maintenance organisation Is it possible our thrust line is quite a few degrees out, and our ailerons are increasing camber and drag unnecessarily, and that and would that have a material speed difference? We reckon we should see closer to 160kt, but we're getting about 145kt TAS at 6,000'. We've just had her polished which might give us back a few knots but could engine alignment and flaps dragging cause a 10kt type of loss? Pictures attached. Thanks for anyone's input on this. We'd like our speed back :-)