NickM20F

‘67 M20F Pretty new here so excuse me if this is a silly question or been asked before a bunch of times- I have not been able to find any posts about it: I try to run LOP whenever I’m flying for more than 30 mins or climbing up past 6/7k. Don’t really understand well enough how to do the “big pull” and am a little fearful to try getting to LOP when I’m over 65%. I always use my edm900 and lean find to get to 5-30 deg lop (my spread isn’t that tight). For some reason I will burn 8-8.5 gph at these settings (~~20 LOP 65% 7-10kft) on some days, and on other days I will end up at 10gph. Is this normal? From everything I read on here it sounds like this is not normal. It’s probably about a third of the time, I go up and she settles closer to that 10gph. It was really striking to me this week in particular because I flew on back to back days with very similar weather conditions and altitude. On Thursday I was getting 8.5, and on Friday 10. So yesterday I tried about 4 times to re-lean, make sure I wasn’t just getting my peak egt wrong. Kept leaning further and further until I got to 8gph, and started to get really serious power reductions and 100+ lop egt readouts on the EDM. When I’m on a 10gph day she cruises a bit faster too, maybe 144, where I’ll cruise closer to 140 at 8.5gph. Any advice here? This normal for y'all? Doesn’t bother me much just curious what might be going on. No other issues with the bird, flies fantastic, generally can’t tell any other performance differences between an “8gph day” and a “10gph day”, other than I’ll go from 17mpg to 14/15 mpg on the EDM. Thanks, -Nick

I’m in almost the same boat! Maybe 6 months ahead of you. Based out of Houston. Where do you fly in to? Maybe we can meet up some time

@47U That could be interesting. I don't know anything about em so I just spent 5 minutes googling. Running 1 surefly looks like a good option. I wonder if anyone would buy my run out left mag to offset the cost of the surefly. If i could get a few bucks for it, then maybe upgrading wouldn't end up costing much more than the IRAN anyway?

Little update / closure for everyone who helped me out here.... I pulled the plug to take a look and clean it. Turns out it was a finewire already, and unbeknownst to me (new plane) I had finewires on all 8 plugs... awesome. Plug wasn't dirty, so I tried swapping with another plug, same position (L4) still not firing. Then I tried probing around and found a short in the mag harness going to that plug. So looks like I'm needing a new harness from my left mag to Cyl 4. That mag is at 560hrs anyway, and needs to come half apart to replace that cable, I'm just going to go ahead and send it off for overhaul. Maybe it's the universe telling me something. Thanks for the help!

What do yall think about throwing one tempest fine wire in there if the rest are champion massive? If I do end up needing to replace

I've got a 67 m20f, fairly new to me about 100 hours on her, 400 smoh. Before attempting a flight the other day, I experienced some serious roughness during the run-up when I switched to the left mag. It ran fine on both & right, but when I switched to left I get serious roughness, and cylinder 4 CHT&EGT started plummeting. I figured it was a dirty plug so I leaned out, ran it up and waited. Took a few tries but eventually got it to run normal on L without roughness at about 1700 rpm. For better or worse I was content with that and went on my merry way. In flight however I noticed my #4 egt was pretty high. It had been higher than the rest the past week or two, but I never thought too much of it. I noticed it once or twice creep into the yellow on my EDM900 (maybe 1550 i don't remember). And this was while trying to transition to LOP, where the only way I got it out of the yellow was to richen back to 12 gph or so. This caused me a little concern so when I landed again at home I did another runup on the ground, but tried the mag check at 2000 rpm instead of 1700, extreme roughness was back when switched to L, and same situation where #4 CHT and EGT would plummet. I was unable to remedy the roughness at this higher RPM. Now would be a good time to mention my right mag is around 100hrs SOH and left mag is around 560hrs SOH. I've been meaning to get the left done the next time in in the shop, within the next few months anyway. I'm trying to figure out what might be going on here, if I need to go ahead with the mag immediately because it's probably the cause... and lastly if I'm at least moderately safe to make the 30 min top to the shop. So do y'all think it could still just be a fouled plug on #4L, bad wire from the mag to that plug maybe? Or mag getting toast? Considering I can get it to run smoother at lower rpm it makes me think wire is not the issue. Of course I'd prefer it to be just a fouled plug. If I take it to the shop with the intent on doing the mag right now though I think it would be best to decide that before I head over there, so I can come with a mag in hand / on the way so I'm not parked in their shop quite as long. Thanks for all the help. New owner, not super mechanically strong so I won't be taking apart the mag or anything like that myself, but I do want to have a good idea what could be going on before I get her in to the shop.

Super interested to hear the responses to this as well. I live in Houston and so far my favorite has been T82 in Fredericksburg, TX. Probably close enough for you to get without a fuel stop. Super cool little town 6 minute uber ride off the field, last couple times i've been I waited 5-10 mins on an uber. Courtesy car never available of course

Do you know how many hours the install took on the reiff? I’m thinking about getting one installed on my M20F as well

80-90 is a lot I feel like there’s gotta be something going on there

During cruise or just climb? I aim to keep it under 400 but always end up 400-420 in climb. Then 340-375 in cruise depending if I’m lop or rop I’m pretty new so definitely could be wrong but I don’t worry too much myself as long as I stay under 420. Pretty much impossible for me to keep it under 400 in climb as well unless I’m at a pretty pathetic climb rate

Not sure how applicable it really is but I have almost the same spread on my 67 m20F. I dont even bother looking at any other cylinder temps my #2 is always hottest by far

I just finished up my transition training with @TheAv8r, who I met on here. We're both located in the Houston area. If anyone is looking for transition training I can't recommend Alex enough. The training was not just about getting me checked out in the plane, he made sure to really prepare me for Mooney ownership. He provided a lot of great documentation along the way, and is an excellent coach. With everything that I came away with, I felt like he provided a lot of valuable service for the money. Thanks Alex!

Quick update. I’m glad you guys scared me into putting in some more effort. Only took about an hour and a half of holding it in a new bent shape to get it where I want. No burn cert woes for me. That was much easier than expected, I was too chicken about snapping that plastic in there the first go around

I'll give it a shot! Who knows maybe I can just bend it up by hand. I'll drop a pic here if i'm successful. Yeah I'm down in Texas, and a new pilot so I'll be staying away from icing conditions for a while... Don't hold your breath for that PIREP

Sounds like my best bet then is to just get this one bent into shape, if I add a different one I'd have to cut it all up to keep sufficient airflow