FloridaMan

< 200 and 2 years

It was a bad coil. This was my third time in 7 years of Mooney ownership being stuck AOG away from home (if you don’t include that engine failure). KLQK might be the best place I’ve ever been broken down. I ended up going to college bars around Clemson for three nights in a row and I suspect that the total repair combined with what I spent might have been cheaper than if it had happened at home. The shop was able to repair my mag with a serviceable coil and I was on my way for less than $500.

One of my grandfathers I believe was in some sort of dental logistics in the UK during ww2. The other was a fighter pilot.

Another thought. The slickstart is connected to that mag and the engine starts nearly immediately. That doesn’t seem consistent with the left magneto being bad. Thoughts on what to look at? Bad ignition switch? There is minimal rpm drop between right mag and both mags. Is there a different contact position for “start” than the L/Both for the left mag? Could it be the slickstart screwing up?

Don’t forget that forward CG limits are partially defined by stall speed limitations. There is no lack of elevator authority at full forward CG in a Rocket.

Don’t forget that a lot of rockets have 19lbs of lead added to the rear of the empennage per the maintenance manual.

Mag check. Left mag. Doesn’t quit. Struggles. Mixture changes don’t seem to affect it.

I would not argue that there is a safe cloud height to navigate through. If there is vertical development, there is, or was, convection in it. I found myself in an embedded buildup at night in Florida in my M20F. I kept my airspeed at just over Vy and continued to climb -- my logic was I wanted as much altitude as I could get to recover from an upset. It required working the controls to the stops to maintain wings level, which is all that I worried about: airspeed and right-side up. Eventually I came out of the side at around 9000ft and the top wasn't much higher than that. Oftentimes in the Rocket, I'll look down at the Nexrad and see solid red around me when I'm over the tops at 10,000ft. There can be some absolutely nasty convective stuff that doesn't go that high up. An experienced Mooney IA and pilot once told me about a customer who had an M20K and there was a small buildup in front of him. He said the radar painted something, but he didn't trust the radar. ATC said they didn't see anything, so he went through the cloud. There was enough hail inside that cloud to beat the leading edges of the wings flat and it totaled the airframe.

8500 can be violent enough to outclimb the airplane and have hail. I’ve had my windows ice up in VMC flying over clouds, well clear at 13,000 from the moisture shooting out of the tops, so you can get icing when outside of visible moisture. Here is a video I made of clouds at 17,500. Use the slider to run the video quickly and you can see the rapid growth. I’ve seen them develop faster than this at 8,000ft too.

That’s common in the Jacksonville airspace. Foreigners who haven’t ever driven a car more than 40mph get selected by some half baked government process to learn to fly.

This is one reason I replaced all of the factory engine instruments in my M20F. Phil at Avon Park discovered my fuel pressure line was weeping onto my exhaust. The line runs from somewhere on the fuel system to the firewall. The fuel pressure gauge in the panel has a braided hose that runs from the firewall to the instrument. Fuel goes into the back of your panel. That line had never been changed.

Oops. I just saw that you tried an in-flight mag check. I had an issue once where my IA had my keys, so I used the keys that I keep in my pocket. The weight of the keychain plus turbulence bumped me to a single mag. The slowing combustion event strikes me as a possible culprit. I would verify mag timing. Another thing you can do is to try different engine RPMs and see how EGT responds. Lowering RPM gives more time for the mixture to fully combust. Does the factory EGT use the same probe(s) as your engine monitor? If you switch to one mag, does the EGT skyrocket? Does it behave the same for either magneto? On my M20F on my maiden flight home, I noticed high EGT intermittently. When we stopped for gas, we ended up with a dead magneto. The coil had failed and the mag was failing intermittently in flight and we believe that it was the cause for the periods of high EGTs.

A bad magneto will cause EGTs to skyrocket, as will a bad plug on a single cylinder. Do a hot mag check. Be quick with it.

McCauley on an M20E? Never heard of that combination.

This, though running the tank "dry" is a better metric because you get a "real world" usable amount. Fueling the long range tanks in the Rocket is a bit of a chore. All while rocking the wing with my leg, I fill the inboard tanks to the flapper, then the outboard, then return to the inboard tanks and "nurse" them up to the neck of the tank, then top off the outboard tanks again. I believe the inboard tanks are supposed to be 37.8 and the outboard are 14.5 on mine. They're all a bit different with speed brake installs. I've burned 50 gallons off of one side before (according to the totalizer) and the engine didn't quit, but I haven't run one dry yet. Also, fun trivia: no Rockets that I know of have pressurized magnetos.

The first few pages explain why: https://redskyventures.org/doc/cessna-misc/Continental_Tips_on_Engine_Care.pdf

Anyone know what causes it to hunt for pitch? Flight director is spot on, but the KFC 200 will get into an increasing pitch oscillation when flying a couples approach, turning or attempting to capture altitude if you’re climbing or descending at over 500fpm

Why the FBO?

The above is why I didn't go with the factory. With Aero Engines of Winchester, $24,300, including shipping, my engine arrived with new flow matched cylinders, new camshaft, et cetera. Had I gone to Lycoming at that very time, I would've been facing an engine teardown in the near future due to an AD for rod bushings. I guess what I'm getting at is that I had all of the same motivations for going with a factory overhaul thinking that it would give me some sort of advantage over an overhaul shop. The long wait put me off and I ended up dodging multiple bullets by going with a different shop. It wasn't the money (I did end up buying the Rocket 9 months later and still have the F). https://www.lycoming.com/sites/default/files/SB632B Connecting Rod Identification.pdf

I'd call Dillon's Aviation in Greenville NC (KPGV). Not a MSC, but I'd trust them as much as anyone. Make sure to request photos of the spar under the back seat as part of the PPI to make sure they actually look at it. The guy in the thread below paid good money for a PPI and they didn't find the corrosion because they must not've known to look there.

Paging @cujet to the white courtesy phone.

My EDM-900 on my Rocket often shows 0.0 fuel flow until I start taxiing around and then shows 2-3 gallons at idle, which is close to what my M20F shows at idle. The old fuel flow/totalizer in the Rocket did the same thing at idle, but had even greater error in the totalizer. I think the sending units are the same, but my IA used the new JPI one when he did the install. I figure there's an adjustment for K-factor, but I'm also curious if the mounting location could be causing it to not read at startup.

You may be annoyed about where you installed it because of that required "ENGINE" light. When you pull power to idle to land, it'll blink yellow. If your prop holds 2700RPM, it'll blink red. Is it coupled to your GPS? I wrote a piece of software that converts my JPI downloads to logbook entries. Includes start/destination airport and day/night flying.

Use avgas. The dye dissolves in it.

Pull up the rear seat, remove the panels covering the round holes and give a thorough inspection of the corners of the spar under that seat. Demand pictures.