FloridaMan

Where are you located? I don't think you'll see those numbers on <200 mile trips since you'll be climbing out for part of the trip and will be full rich for at least the first part. I think you should be able to find an M20F all day long for < $45,000 that will serve your mission of 200 miles or less. For such trips, I would assume you'll be VFR and the panel isn't all that important. I think if you accepted a mid time engine and an old panel that you could possibly even find one for significantly less than $40k. As for your size. I'm 6'1 and around 200 lbs and I've flown with another person who's 6'4 and two women in the back seat for two hour trips without issue. There is more room in the left seat than the right.

I wouldn't think so. This is just my own paranoia and, as far as I know, not exactly a standard practice. Bad parts often come in batches and people tend to assemble and torque things the same way each time. If there are bad parts or an apprentice missing oversight and making a mistake, I'd rather lose just one mag than both. I will go on to say that the demand and pay for qualified jet aircraft mechanics has enough disparity to create a substantial void of highly competent GA piston mechanics. I'm not saying all GA A&Ps are bad; there are good A&Ps out there, and it's a reason why most of us use the same mechanics.

I'd make sure your baffling is in check as well. I remember years ago some car magazine bought an old Camaro and did a bunch of bolt-on mods. The biggest performance increase came from the initial tune-up to factory specs. Proper baffling and sealing is incredibly important. On tightly cowled airplanes like ours, cooling is achieved by a high pressure differential between the inlet and exit of the cooling air. The air passing through the tight fins of our cylinders needs to pass through quickly and there's a lot of resistance in those fins. If there's a gap anywhere in the baffling, that air would much rather go there, thus reducing the high pressure side, and likely also bleeding into the low pressure side, further reducing airflow. This is why it is advised to not run engines like ours for very long with no cowling as they will overheat very quickly.

Also, you have a C and posted two mags, so I assume that you don't have the dual mag that a lot of the J's have. I wanted to mention this in case there's a "J" owner reading that may not be aware of this (engines with a "D" as part of the engine number, such as IO-360-A3B6D). I have heard that the plastic gear in the dual mags have killed a number of people due to neglected inspection and maintenance. What happens on those is that the teeth break off of the gear, resulting in a failure of both mags. This accident was reported as being due to an improperly mounted dual magneto, but it highlights my point in staggering the service. If someone is going to do an improper installation, it's best that they're only doing it to only one of them if you have the benefit of single magnetos. http://mooneyspace.com/topic/6147-sad-tale-of-a-io-360-a3b6d-be-careful-folks/

I wouldn't do both mags at once, even if they're due. My fear is someone making the same mistake on both mags or a bad batch of parts causing simultaneous infant mortality on both. There's a place in Florida that I've been referred to (I haven't used them yet, but they seem cheaper than most shops and claim to have a one day turnaround) that has a fixed price for mag IRANs called Tropic Airpower: http://www.tropicairpower.com/

KFMY is a frequent destination for cheap gas and excellent facilities. KCHN is a little closer and had comparable prices. It's $4.70 at your new KZPH base.

Another thing to note in regards to valves. "Morning sickness" is supposedly a symptom of a potentially failing exhaust valve and, to my understanding, is more likely to occur on higher time cylinders. The symptom, as described to me, is a rough running engine at startup that gets better and the roughness goes away. A broken valve strikes me as the biggest risk of catastrophic failure of a high time engine. If memory serves me correctly, Mooneygirl had an off airport landing that resulted in substantial damage as the result of a failed valve.

I'm not quite sure as I don't have a FF gauge. I'd guess it's probably between 10 and 11 gph. I tend to fly long x/c flights and I switch tanks after three hours. The empty tank usually will take 30-34 gallons when I fill up and that includes fuel burn on climb out. I honestly expected to see 153-155 TAS as that's what I seemed to "average" over the ground. I guess I just assumed the wind would be with me 1/2 the time instead of almost never. Also, that trip my IAS seemed a few mph higher than what I'm used to. It was cooler than usual here in FL and I was lower than I usually travel. The plane was full of fuel and I was flying by myself. IAS was 160-163mph. I usually see IAS at 155mph in cruise at higher altitudes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

A partially clogged injector will make that cylinder run lean and all others to run rich. The end result is that that cylinder will have peak EGT way earlier than the others. And it may stop firing altogether, making the EGT drop to nothing. All other cylinders will get more fuel than they're supposed to since the fuel going to the cylinder with the obstructed injector will go to the others.

I did the 3 direction check yesterday. 1967 m20f at 6500 ft. OAT 10C at altitude. 24" ram air open 2500 RPM ROP was 158kts. Mods include LoPresti cowl, powerflow exhaust, GAMIs, misc gap seals Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yup. I had the exact same issue; ended up being a little flake of something in my #3 injector. Also, when running up on the ground at lower power setting -- say, around 1900 RPM, that cylinder was way hotter than the others. As I added power, the EGT dropped to nothing.

I have a velcro one on my stock M20F left yoke and I'm more than happy with it.

That is correct. But we do know what ground speeds we're used to seeing in our airplanes. A leg I flew in October a couple years ago in New Mexico I think I averaged just over 100kts, and over 200 on the return trip, but in general, we know that in level cruise what we expect to see. In my airplane, it's 150-165kts over the ground in most cases. Maybe today I'll go up and try the experiment. I'm kindof scared to do it because I might find my plane to be slower than I keep telling myself

Not to derail the thread, but I think that the part I put in bold is a major contributing factor in base-final stall/spin accidents.

I have collected a ton of data flying my 67F. I will go do your test and report back, but if you want to look at my flight data, you can view it here: http://airwaysandrunways.com/Flights/Default.aspx I'm Alan on the site. If the numbers on a particular flight seem way off, it might be one of the handful of flights when I was in something other than the Mooney. The average speeds include averaging from climbout. Clicking within the flight path will show you the speed at that data point. Click the date to select the flight. Map overlay data is current data and not data at the time of flight.

If it is an injector, you'll probably see an EGT on that cylinder that is much higher or lower than the others. Like I said, in my case, the injector obstruction was inconsistent.

I have experienced this a handful of times: As some people have mentioned, if you are in areas of descending air, you will be climbing to maintain altitude which will affect your airspeed/groundspeed. If you are using an AP/hand fly the airplane and you will notice the adjustments that you have to make. I have experienced this when I had a failing magneto coil. EGTs were not necessarily going off the chart, depending on the mixture setting. Also, the coil behaved weirdly in that it would idle, but not be able to produce spark at run up settings. I would recommend trying mag checks and noting temps on the ground at full power. I have also experienced similar behavior when I had a clogged injector. In that case, the issue was also intermittent. I happened consistently one day, then I was unable to reproduce it the next day, then it came back with a vengeance. The problem manifested itself in flight as surging that went away with mixture adjustments. A fourth item, that most mechanics suggested was the issue before I discovered the obstructed injector, is the fuel servo (throttle body). My understanding of the servo is that it consists of a couple diaphragms that can become stiff over time, making an engine slow to respond. Byron posted a schematic of the part here: http://mooneyspace.com/topic/5317-question-about-the-fuel-servo-on-injected-engines/ Another method of failure I investigated with the fuel servo was to verify the o-rings were not failing. My understanding of the process is as follows: (this is done with engine off) Open your Ram-Air door, so you can look directly into the fuel servo and look at the impact tubes (I assume you can do this with the standard Cowl; I have the LoPresti cowling). With the mixture at idle cut-off, open the throttle all the way and turn on your electric boost pump. Look through the ram air door and see if you have any fuel leaking out of those tubes. You will likely have fuel running out of your intake vent tube (under the belly) onto the ground after several seconds. This is normal, as is loading of fuel into one of the cylinders if you pull your plugs.

You should ask if you can return them if they don't meet your expectations. I eventually ended up buying a clarity aloft headset. They say hearing is one of those things you don't realize you're losing until it's too late. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have the non anr version of that headset and it's very good for the price. I have the previous anr pilotmall.com headset and it worked well. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

http://www.pilotmall.com/product/PilotMallcom-Sound-Silencer-Headset-ANR/pilotmall-headsets

I live in Tampa Bay. Here are some reference figures for you. I rented a Cessna 172 to fly from Tampa Bay to Greenville, NC. The flight took me 6-7 hours each way because I had to stop for fuel and the total rental expense was around $1400. The 1967 Mooney will get me to NYC, with a fuel stop, for around $600-$700 round-trip, depending on fuel prices and winds. Tampa Bay to NC is under three hours to get to Asheville and around 3.5 to get to Raleigh. The Mooney carries six hours of fuel as well. I can recall four Piper crashes here in the area over the past two years. Two of them were definitely fuel exhaustion, one was likely fuel exhaustion and I don't know about the one that landed in Venice, FL on those people. The common element with those Piper accidents is that you have four hours, or less, of fuel and to maintain reserves, you have to stop for fuel before you're really ready to get out of the plane; plus, because you're going a lot slower, you have fewer choices to stop and the temptation is there to push things.

Talk about oddball lights. In my 67F, there is one tucked under the bottom of the panel that can be dimmed. I think it's so you can see the fuel selector.

Pm sent Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm late to the party on this one. I always twist the handle and do the fingernail check as one of my engine start / pretaxi items. I've found that sometimes the handle is hard to move if the plane sits for a couple of days and that twisting it helps.