Espeed

Scott, there is 3500 airframe hrs. on my E, I will try and get some pics this afternoon.

It was tried to be fished out until it was realized that the rod was stainless just like the handle, The top of the J-bar has a welded butt with a small hole in the center, the only access really to the bottom of the J-bar with a magnet is through the side access hole, trust me, a whole day was spent trying to fish the broken piece out with a magnet, it would never pick up. My A&P has all the rigging tools and torque tool for re-rigging the gear, he has been servicing manual gear mooneys for 25 years. He has 3 J-bar mooneys at our local field that he annuals. I'm not replacing the whole Johnson Bar, just the Handle.

UPDATE IN ABOVE POST !!!

UPDATE !!! Alright guys, here is what we found, the handle has a rod that is pressed into it at the top and is threaded at the bottom. The rod runs through a small hole in the J-bar where a nut is screwed on through the side access hole on the J-bar. The nut just acts as a bump stop keeping the handle from coming off the bar. Well, the pressed end of the rod at the top of the handle had worn and fell through the hole to the bottom of the J-bar, thus allowing the handle to slide off the J-bar. There's was no easy way to remove the rod from the bottom of the J-bar with the limited space of the access hole on the side, so the J-Bar had to be removed. That was an ordeal. Now we are looking for another handle, being the handle and rod are all one piece. My A&P said that he could probably rig and fix the rod to stay in the handle but we figured we could just find another handle and slide it on and be back flying.

There is 3500 airframe hrs. on my E. From what I encountered, the bar itself is two short to grab either latch, so the handle is a must for proper use. The spring inside the handle rest on top of the bar and puts pressure against the locking end of the handle, without the spring, the handle itself can't function properly, there would be no pressure holding the beveled end of the handle up into the latch. Now maybe in theory, if you could hold the handle and bar in the gear down position until weight from the plane on the ground would create pressure against the latch, then maybe it would hold, but man I wouldn't want to be in that position. I am very thankful that everything went smooth. I haven't talked with my A&P yet to see if he has had a chance to look at it. He said he would try to have it fixed this week. I will definitely be keeping everybody posted. This maybe something that needs to be a key check during annual.

Alright Guys, as much talk as there is on here about the Johnson bar reliability, I am wondering if any other Johnson Bar fliers have had this happen before. First off, I am a 250 hr. non-IFR pilot with 175 of those hrs. in my 65' M20E. I love my E and I love the johnson bar. This past Sat., My father and I flew over to a local car swap meet a mere 30 miles away, when we left out that afternoon, I was performing a normal takeoff when the unexpected happened. I reached up, unlatched the handle and commenced to folding it to the floor when the chrome handle flew off and ended up in the back seat. Now you can imagine my surprise to see the johnson bar just dangling mid way with no handle. Luckily my father (also a pilot) reached back and grabbed the spring and shoved it back into the handle and was able to slide it back on the bar and I lock it in the floor. I know, hind sight tells me we should have locked it in the gear down position but everything happened so fast. Now for the short 15 min. flight home I had to wonder what was going to happen when I got ready to put the gear down. Was the handle going to fully latch? Was I going to have to make the dreadful belly landing? Well, the gear went down and the handle latch held, and trust me, right up to touching the ground I have given the bar many tugs and fingernail test along with a racing heart rate. Once taxied and stopped at the hanger and shut down, I found what looked like a dowel pin laying on the floor covered in grease. My A&P is supposed to be putting it up on jacks today to determined just what happened. Just wanted to see if any of you guys have experienced this before or am I the first to ever have this problem with the fail safe johnson bar. On a side note, I am grateful that my father was with me, had this happen to me while I was by myself, I'm not sure if the calm atmosphere would have been the same.

I found the old thread on this plane. Looks like this guy is still trying to get over on somebody.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I do believe this is the same mooney M20E that had been flooded some time back. Well, looks like it is back on Ebay. Check it out and chime in. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ULTIMATE-MOOONEY-HAS-ALL-/270761911215?pt=Motors_Aircraft&hash=item3f0aaae3af

I've already got my name in the Hat, As of now, the weather looks good. We are looking foward to it. Steven

Thanks Mitch, I do have the Zeftronics regulator and I will be taking a closer look at it this weekend. I am hoping it is something as simple as a bad ground or a loose alternator belt. I do check the belt during my walk around preflight with a simlpe tug for tension and it seems the same but then again what I see as fine may not be. I will keep you guys posted as to what I find out. Thanks again, Steven

Thanks Scott, I will throw it out there on MAPA to see what I get back.

Hey guys, My wife and I took a quick trip in our 65' E this past Sunday and I noticed something a litte different. On the way down everything was fine. We landed, had a quick lunch there at the airport cafe. On restart, I noticed that during my taxi voltage gauge was only showing 12 volts when it usually reads 14.1(I have the digital Aerospace logic volt/amp gauge along with an alternator conversion all which was done by previous owner). When I got to my run-up, at 1800 rpms the volts instantly jumped up to 14 but when I brought it back to 1000 rpms the volts went back to 12. When we took off the volts went back up but during our flight back the volts were jumping up and down from 13.6 up to 14.5. I also noticed that my amperage was spiking on the amperage read out. The amperage was going up and down constantly. I tried turning off strobes and rotating during flight and nothing changed. Once we landed, during our taxi back to the hanger, the volts were holding 14 but the amperage was still spiking back and forth. I am puzzled as to what happened, any ideas? Thanks, Steven

I am definetly going to try to be there in Feb. I have been wanting to attend, just my schedule hasn't lined up for one yet. Williston is only about 50 mins from me here in south ga. so it will be on the calender for me. Looking foward to it and hoping the the weather permits.

This isn't a great shot, but was all that I had on hand. It already had the 201 style updated panel and yokes when I bought it, I am getting ready to yank the 170 and Loran and replace with a 430 WAAS.