N201MKTurbo

So I saw on the news that there was a fatal automobile accident in Phoenix last week. I have decided to stop driving because the risks are just to great.

My plane has an air oil seperator from M20 Turbos.

My plane has an amazingly low oil consumption. It uses about a QT in 50 hours. The problem is it leaks like a sieve. All that oil leaks out and makes a godawful mess of my plane. I just pulled all the cylinders and I'm replacing all the thru-studs. The engine was factory reman just before I bought the plane. I figured it would have a good crankcase. I was wrong! It had two 0.001 oversize studs, one 0.002 oversize stud and one 0.010 oversize stud. I'm replacing them all with new ones. It is amazing how much mess a QT of oil can make in 50 hours.

A valid concern. You could have someone run the engine up while feeling the pressure at the dip stick.

It really won't hurt anything to run it that way, except for contaminating the oil a bit faster. Run it for a few more hours and if it doesn't get better, you will need to pull the cylinders..

I would encourage you to do long cross countries, that is what flying is all about. Just make sure the weather is OK. You will be surprised how far you can go VFR. You are never going to learn to fly reading a book. Not that I'm discouraging you from learning all you can, but the only way to make sense of it all is to get out there.

That cable isn't that hard to replace. Just buy a non-vernier cable, put it in, import the plane, put the vernier cable back in and sell the other cable on EBAY.

OK, if the flaps are bleeding up, it must be the check valve in the flap pump. There is a small pin that the cable pushes to push the ball off its seat. It is not an o-ring problem. Either the ball or seat is dirty or the seat is damaged. You can repair the seat by re-coining it by putting the ball in the seat and whacking it real hard with a punch and hammer (on the bench not in the plane). BTW don't stretch or replace the spring on the check valve ball, or your flaps won't work at high elevation airports.

No, it does. The fuel gets squirted out of the small orifice. The airflow through the injector atomizes the fuel stream as the fuel pases through the larger orifice. The airflow is caused by the lower absolute pressure in the cylinder's intake port. In a NA engine the air comes through a small screen on the injector. In a Turbo engine the air comes from the turbo. In either case there should be the same air pressure differential across the injector as there is across the throttle plate.

Lets see on my practical I had to do a dye penetrant check on a spinner, run a line of rivets on two scraps of sheet metal. Preflight and start a Baron. Do a compression check and time the mags on the same Baron. Fill out a 337 for an air filter change. Do a W/B for a helicopter. Rewire the starting circuit on an APU/GPU from a schematic. Describe all the components on an old jet engine. And we talked about regulations for about an hour.

So what you are saying is that the debris is coming from somewhere between the inlet screen in the servo and the injectors. This leaves the injector servo which could have deteriorating seals or diaphragms, the flow divider diaphragm. The hoses and a fuel flow sensor, if it is between the servo and flow divider. If some thread sealant like “Fuel Lube” or Teflon tape were used it could be washing out and clogging the injectors.

The real limiting factor in the Mooney is the rudder. If the rudder peddle is all the way to the floor and you cannot straighten out the plane then it is too much crosswind. You will need to find another runway. Another thing you can do is angleize on the runway. If the wind is from the right, land on the left edge of the runway and roll out towards the right side of the runway. This only works on wide runways.

I have an M-20 turbos system, which is just a fancy version of the Rajay system. I have the Lycoming turbo injectors with the reference lines coming from the intercooler. The only filter is the intake air filter. The intake/compressor side of the system is always very clean except for a little oil downstream from the turbo. I have never had the problem you describe. Is it possible your injector air hoses are deteriorated? Where is the clog at the small fuel orifice or at the larger fuel/air orifice? If it is at the small orifice it must be coming from the fuel system. If it is at the larger orifice it is probably coming through the air line.

Modern solid state voltage regulators should last forever. I guess vibration could shake the parts apart. I have never had an alternator fail suddenly, they generally give a lot of warning that they are sick. The only thing that wears out is the brushes and they will last way more then 2000 hours. I think I have had six alternator failures in the two Mooneys I've owned. None have completely quit during flight. Maybe I'm just lucky. I have had the field wire break during flight which makes the alternator stop working, but its not the alternator that failed. If you will sleep better with with a new alternator, then go for it. I'm sure your mechanic will appreciate the extra work. FWIW if you have an alternator overhauled, make sure they replace the bushings in the mounting tabs. They usually don't replace them and they are always warn out.

Interesting. I have found that I have to set my PF unit to the 25k setting to get 90% SPO2 at 16k feet. There is no reason to not have a pulse ox on board and do whatever is required to keep your SPO2 above 90%.

Well, that depends.... If you don't fly long enough to charge the battery, it will get discharged and won't start the plane. If you leave it discharged long enough it will get sulphated and it will not charge. Even with a severely crippled alternator, if you fly long enough, with a light enough load the battery I'll charge. You can operate with a damaged alternator for a long time.

I used to fly daily from Denver to various destinations in Wyoming which I think is the windiest place on earth. I landed in Laramie one day with a 70 knot cross wind. A Beech 1900 was on its third aborted takeoff attempt when I landed. It wasn't really a landing as much as hovering down to the runway. I still had flying speed after I stopped. My ground speed at touchdown was zero and the plane was almost perpendicular to the runway. The landing was actually pretty easy. Taxiing to the ramp was the real adventure. Luckily a man from the FBO saw me taxi in and came out and tied me down while i was flying the plane in the parking space. I'm not advocating this, I was 26 years old with a plane and thought I was bulletproof.

One of the common failures is one of the six diodes will fail, usually because of a fracture in a solder joint, this causes one of the three phases to fail reducing the output by a third. If you loose two phases the alternator will still work, but at a very low capacity. You can also get an open in the stator windings causing the loss of one of the three phases. So, alternators don't either work or not work. When you loose a phase you will hear an increase in alternator noise in your audio system, a whine that varies with engine speed and gets louder if you increase the load by doing something like turning on the landing light.

Are both going down? There is an asymmetric extension box which will make them both drop if they don't extend within the programmed time. There is a clutch in the speed brake assembly to make them drop. There is a DC motor that drives the speed brake up and down. If the motor or gears need lubrication, it will run slow and the asymmetric box will time out and drop them. The manual for the speed brakes say they should be lubricated annually, most are not.

To remove the governor, first remove the oil filter/screen. Remove the air pump and accessary drive. Then remove the right mag. Remove the prop cable and the oil line to the front of the engine. Remove any heater ducts and electrical connections that are in the way. Remove all eight nuts from the governor and the drive pad. Work the governor and drive out of the engine together. Pull the drive about half way out and tilt upwards. The governor will now come off the drive and after that the drive will come out. Re-assemble in the reverse order. The other option is to remove the engine from the mount. With the above method you can have the governor out in about 30 minutes. (unless the oil line is being a Bi***)

Why don't you just get it overhauled? it is about 1/3 the price and the overhaulers will make it like brand new.

Or maybe if you remove thr tiedown rings for every flight you will remember to remove the tie down chains...

OK, after nearly 5000 hours flying Mooneys, I've had my share of interesting situations. I find that when I'm flying with other people in the plane, especially just out joy riding, I'm probably the most dangerous. In my daily commute or business flying I do things very routinly even down to how many steps I use to open the hanger door. When out joy riding in the mountains, I'm doing things that are outside of my routine, which is a nice break from the day to day boring flying. That being said, one day about 15 years ago I was taking some friends sightseeing around the lakes east of phoenix which have canyons. I've done this many times and I'm very familiar with the area. Doing steep turns so they could see the boats and dams and scenery. Not super low, but not to high either. Next thing I look about a mile or so ahead and notice that the next ridge looks kind of high, so I go to full power and Vx. As I get closer I realize that I might not make it, I have no extra energy and no place to turn. All the maneuvers you are talking about would not work. I was trying to out climb rising terrain, any maneuver would have caused a stall with no room to recover. About all you can do at that point is re-discover religion. Well I cleared the ridge by about 100 feet. My passengers thought it was kind of cool. I didn't tell them how close they came to a very hard landing on top of a mountain. I don't know of any training that would have changed this situation. People know it is dangerous to drink and drive yet they still do it. People know the speed limit yet they still exceed it. I have flown around those canyons so many times I didn't think there was anything out there that could hurt me. Just be careful out there....

Hot starts are a pain because the fuel injection lines are above the cylinders. When the engine is shut down the heat from the cylinders boils the fuel in the lines and forces it out into the cylinders, so all the cylinders are flooded, especially the ones with the exhaust valves open. It also means all the fuel injuction lines are empty, so it takes a bit for fuel to refill the lines which probably helps the situation. I always assume the engine is flooded for eight hours after I shut it down. For a day after that I find that the best way to start it is just set the mixture to full rich throttle to its happy spot and crank, no priming. Don't run the fuel pump unless it has been a few days sense you ran the engine. Lycoming IO-360s are always flooded!

If you have an IKEA near by, I have found they have the highest quality AAs for the money...