Sabremech

Those downlock are perfectly legal!

Just because it’s not in the TCDS doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Just a little more paperwork!

There’s not enough profit in it for all the work and liability to reverse engineer it. If I had this part issue, I’d look to find parts to convert it to manual gear. David

Good day, I have a left side spindle assembly and will check in for a right side when I get to my shop in a week or so. Would be willing to sell this and ship if you’re interested. David

All international shipments are extremely complicated with each country having different requirements. It’s a nightmare. David

I may have some. I purchased some used gear legs a number of years ago. It will take me two weeks before I can look in my parts bins. David

I’ll have to give that some thought. There are certainly more parts useable between an A and a C versus the M20 I have currently. David

Hi Matt, Good to hear from you. It’s going to be impossible for me to leave it 100% original. I do have an interested party that I talked to about my plans and they love it. They feel the same as I do in regards to the rear windows. We’ll see what does or doesn’t get done! I’ll have to post pictures of the fuselage covered under a sheet now! The corporate job is crazy busy as always. That’s why the Mooney progress is much slower than I thought I could get done by now. As for Warbird, we have the jets for sale. It was in our plan to sell them about now. The P-40 IRAN is coming along nicely but still expect it to be two more years before ready to fly again. How’s everything out West? David

I can’t tell at this time! Will have to be a surprise! David

Good morning Barney, This is the standard break apart position for all Mooney’s. The number of bolts to hold the tail cone on has increased over the years by model. Thanks, David

Great looking bird!

Any information for the guy at Hinkley you can share? Not that I need another Mooney, but you never know what parts might be needed in the future. Thanks, David

Hi Tom, I purchased the used parts I needed from Alan Fox. I believe he’s on MS but can message you his contact info if needed? Thanks, David

Catching up a bit to the current status of the M20. Here’s a few more pictures of this bird. I love the old avionics switch which is a choke cable attached to two switches tied together on the engine side of the firewall. Simple but works. Also a few other pictures of the wood wing along with the instrument panel and aux fuel tank. David

Yep. I was amazed at what was underneath the barn dirt! I still have to clean the tailbone before re-installing it. I’m planning to rework the back windows as I absolutely dislike the teardrop window. Going to make it look more like the later C window. Perfect time to do this work is before putting the tail cone back on. David

First thing I wanted to determine was still in airworthy shape was the wood wing. Second was the engine internals and then trying to start it. The wing is in good shape with just a patch or two required on the fabric. The engine was borescope and looked clean and two short duns have been completed. The engine mounts were in really poor shape and the engine sagged so much into the firewall that I couldn’t get it to idle below 1300 RPM. Throttle was bound up with the gear warning switch that is mounted on the engine side of the firewall. New mounts were installed and waiting to run it again after upgrading the gear disks IAW S/B M20-161. Nose gear is almost complete then on to the main disk changes.

I can share with you the data you request. David

Those are the old Firestone disks and are un-obtainium new. I just removed a set from my M20 and am complying with Mooney S/B M20-161 to install the later style Lord disks. David

Adding to the M20 story, here are some pictures of the disassembly and moving from Gary Indianna to Waukegan IL, UGN. It took about 6 hours to disassemble by myself and the load the tail and tail one in my trailer. That was done on a Saturday. On Sunday I came back south and loaded the fuselage section on a 36 foot flatbed trailer with help from a friend. It was a fun drive around Chicago. This all happened pretty quickly as I received pictures and talked with the broker on a Thursday and when I asked how long I had to move it the answer was by the upcoming Sunday. Time to get moving.

It did cool better. Several factors I believe that helped in that were closing off the area behind the prop and ring gear with baffling along with the exit air below the cylinders being equal on all four cylinders. The gaps were adjusted to all being the same. That came from reading about airflow and cooling from a Reno air race engineer. David

Most MSers are probably familiar with the M20 that I picked up. It was listed here as a Free M20A in southeastern Wi. It ended up not being an A model but a straight 0-320 powered M20. I thought I would start a separate new thread to share bringing it back to airworthy. I’ll update this thread as I do the “ inspect and repair as necessary”, or IRAN. This will be probably a year long process to get it flying as my full time job is quite busy and I commute 5 hours home on weekends from Southeastern Wi. My plan is to get it flying, fly it a bit and then sell it. As much as I’d like to keep it long term, it’s just too expensive and I’m not willing to spend that kind of money when I’m done working full time in a year and a half. I’ll start updating this thread from the beginning to where the project is today. Thanks, David

I used Vans RV baffling for the mods I did to the four cowlings. # 1 and # 2 baffles aren’t tall enough for the Mooney cowling and I made those pieces as I didn’t want to rivet on extensions to fill the gap. They are great baffles and fit well along with easy to assemble and install. You can add the little bit of sheet metal on this front two cylinders and be in good shape for quite a while. My FSDO liked that I used known parts for my mods. David

I ended up inspecting the spark plugs as they are fine wires. Cleaned and rotated them as I usually do. Ground run was good with idle at about 650-660 rpm. The owner flew it yesterday and reported no issues. We’ll continue to monitor to see if this was a one off occurrence.

This one has the Tempest fine wires installed. Thanks, David

Happened once. Not a common issue but something entirely out of the normal for this aircraft after all his years of flying. The owner puts at minimum 100 hours a year on his airplane. I have a few things to look at and Will do so. Plan to fly it Friday after looking it over and doing a ground run or two. Thanks again, David