garytex

Scuba diving, hunting dangerous game, competitive shooting, and flying all require the exclusion of extraneous thought to do well. There is a "Zen" in all of them that bring folks back for more. Like the prospect of being hung in a fortnight it clears the mind of St Exupery's "petty things", and has the added benefit of occasionally being exceptionally useful. Gary

And all the difficulties of alcohol. Everyone should squeal like stuck pigs to any politician that will listen against alcohol in fuel. It's bad all the way around.

I used Bob Cabe, and was extremely pleased. That was the most useful BFR I ever had, both the book and the flying sides. Bob knows Mooneys to a fare-thee-well, and has a flair for conveying that knowledge. Enthusiastic, professional and fun. Gary

Piloto's got it right again. Just had this symptom, intake leak at o ring at base of intake runner. Diagnose by spraying carb cleaner at potential leak points, rpms will go up when you hit a leak. wash off carb cleaner.

My normally smooth LOP engine (IO360 A1A) would not run smooth LOP in flight the other day, and showed a higher egt on #3 at idle. Sure enough it had developed a leak around the o ring at the oil pan side of the #3 intake runner. My mechanic quickly found the leak by spraying carb cleaner around the runners at idle. When he hit the leak there was an rpm rise. If you try this trick, which is way easier than de-cowling to hook up a backwards shop vac and spraying soapy water to find leaks, be sure to wash the carb cleaner off, it's some tough stuff. It occurred to me that rough LOP operations can be sort of a canary in the mine for the state of tune/health of an engine. That mag thats on its last legs, sparking plugs that don't spark so well any more, leaking spark plug wires and intake leaks may manifest themselves early by use of LOP operations or by use of an occasional LOP excursion and get caught before major mischief happens. Gary

Thanks Ray

Oh, I have run mine out to 800 hrs, but the parts showed me that that was plenty long enough. Worn cam followers, toasted points, capacitors looking dodgy. Are you old enough to remember the "tune-up" that was needed on old breaker point vehicles in the 70's and before. Same story. You could go more than 20,000 mi. with no maintenance on that distributor, but it increased the chances that one would sleep out on the ranch, or have a long walk back...I don't want to walk back. Gary

On the tightwad side, If one wants to try fine wires, and not spend a fortune, call Aircraft Spark Plug Service in Van Nuys, CA at 818-787-5680. I've been buying used fine wires from them for 20 years, way cheap, and perfectly good. Last batch I got were Auburns. Recommended. Gary PS Ram in Waco has documented slightly better fuel consumption specifics, especially at altitude, using fine wires

Thank you, Don Gary

Flyboy: On mine, an IO 360 A, but with the same RSA fuel injector, if I leave the boost pump on and the mixture rich, the boost pump would flood the engine 2 seconds after the fuel pressure peaks. I think thats why the procedure is to close the mixture, to keep the boost pump from flooding the engine. So I prime till the pressure peaks, plus a second if OAT is cool, 2 seconds if chilly, and immediately shut off the boost pump. Mixture still rich, but boost pump off. Throttle set to approximate 1200 rpm when the engine fires. Then crank, starts right up. Gary

Thanks, Parker Gary

Six months in, I now feel like I know enough about my F to benefit from a really sharp Mooney IP for my BFR. Any suggestions?Thanks, Gary

Jetdriven is spot on.

So where were you antelope hunting? See many PD's? I'm working on some fly & shoot places. Gary

201er, I am a big slipper. I like to come in to my airport, Lakeway, high. There is nowhere good to go except the runway if one looses the engine. I learned to fly in an early 170, with small flaps, and slipped it too. But 80 MPH indicated is as slow as i will let speed get in my F model, as the plane starts to feel like the bottom is close to coming out. I like to slip on a close high final, using a slipping turn off base, and indicating 90-100. I do not know exactly what the decent rate is, I'm looking out the window, and just glancing at the airspeed. But the slip is effective, allows me to get/stay in gliding range in the pattern, and helps me keep speed down.

Seth You can charge both with a trickle charger. A Battery Minder is great. And yes, with the trickle charger on a battery will "work fine, last a long time". I had a crappy old flooded Gill 25 last 7 years, using a horrid little no brain trickle charger. Gary

I have a focusing Haweye, and the optics are great. Cost $800. I mostly use it for rifle bores (for which is revolutionary, I can't imagine being without it now) but it allows a good view inside cylinders, too. It is great for magnified views of small areas with the mirror on. Kind of slow to inspect everything. fantom above is right, there is a learning curve, and for cylinders I'm on the back side. There is a great webinar on the EAA website by Bush titled "All about cylinders" with great pictures showing about to and failed exhaust valves that is a must read for any borescope neophyte. The short course is that the exhaust valves should have a red ash uniformly all the way around the face of the valve. Spots with no red on the outside edge of the valve face means the valve is running so hot in that area that it burns off the ash, and bad things are about to happen. I'm going to try to look at mine at 100 hr intervals, as that seems to cover the gestation period from warped to broken.

It's easy to love an F Is the oil going out the breather or past the rings? How full do you run your crankcase? If you are running it at 8 qts, just back up your fill to 7-6 qts, and consumption will fall. What is the irritation factor for cleaning the belly. The guys that have the separators are mostly very happy.

Quote: I am using Exxon Elite + Camguard......the Exxon is significantly more per quart.....am I wasting money on the Exxon?? Some folks use the Elite if they are receiving anomalous high copper oil analysis readings with Shell multi. Only happens on Lycs. Goes away with Elite use. Gary Like This Quote MultiQuote

bd32322: I think that the primary means is that in ROP climbs the induction leak cyl. can be too lean thence hotter, and in extremis, detonate. All sorts of mischief ensues. If MP doesn't go below 10 " at idle coming down final with the throttle closed, check for induction leaks, especially #2 at the head joint. Evidently that is one of the favored usual suspects as that tube is prone to vibrate and fret the flange. Turned out to be the case in my instance. And thats enough to eat a cyl promptly. Bitter experience speaking. Mine generated sticking coked up rings that made a longitudinal polish on the barrel wall and a crack too big to weld. Gary

Unless you have an induction leak, which would show lower numbers on egt if you were lop. Induction leaks eat cylinders. Is this merely a harmless instrument artifact, or is your engine trying to tell you something? Curious that the two anomalous cylinders are side by side. What do they share? Are the probes lower on those two exhaust tubes due to some interference in that area? That would make for lower readings. Have those two always been different or is this a new development? Happy pondering Gary

They made my mechanic a great one, with a mechanical fastener, rather than just a wire. The wire eventually work hardens and breaks off. Ask them for one like they made for Hill Country Avaition

JimR I am not too fancy with the JPI. I will be lean of peak and start richening. I think the JPI is in ROP mode when I do this. After a while, the display flashes, and says "leanest", usually #3, usually also the highest absolute value. I then lean from there. Thursday, I was at 9500 ft, 59 OAT 21.5" MP, on the autopilot and got the following. Airspeed is mph off the GPS, EGT Fuel Airspeed 1450 9 164 1460 8.7 165 1440 8.2 165 1430 8.2 165 1420 8.0 166 1400 7.9 163 1385 7.5 157 I then reduced rpm to 2000 briefly, speed fell off, but not a whole lot, but I didn't write it down, and it didn't feel like a happy place for engine or airframe, so I spun it back to 2500. The forcast winds were 30 degrees off the nose at 6, and the E6B on the Garmin thought I had about a 10mph headwind, which I think was close to right. The exciting part is that it'll go around 165 or more at 8 gph, and those are number I see frequently. The sad part is that I can't throw more fuel at it and go much faster. It seems that my speed varies more with temperature than fuel flow. It's all good though. "Identical" mechanicl devises have good, bad and indifferent individual iterations of the type, and we have all suffered through being stuck with a doggy one of this plane or that truck. All in all mine is an adequately efficient example of the type that won't be pushed out of it's comfort zone by more fuel. I wonder what the true meaning (diagnostically speaking) is of what my airplane is trying to tell me. This is anomalous enough behavior that I suspect something is up, wonder if I will ever find out what. Gary

Dave Thanks for your answer. The additional force required to swing the gear must be fierce, if folks will take a speed mod off. Especially Mooney drivers. I figure they'd exercise till they had Popeye forearms first. Temperature sure seemed to make a difference in speed for me today. 8500' 2500rpm 23ish MP, 8.4 gph, 64df (maybe 15 df cooler than of late), at least 50 LOP. I was indicating 155mph instead of the 145 I've been seeing lately, 175 on the gps, and the E6B on my Garmin said 180 mph true, and 10,500 DA. I don't know if I buy that but it was fun. I gotta get a true airspeed. I am also wondering about this big slowing down you guys are talking about when running slightly (20df) LOP at altitude. Even to MP's as low as 20, I can barely notice any difference in speed as I go from peak down to 50 LOP, maybe 2-5 mph max, and depending on altitude it can easily be 1.5 to 2 gph less fuel. Then in the low 7s it really goes in the toilet. I'm going to get up around 12 k and check again, but I seem to remember the same behavior up high last winter. Byron, mine gets quieter at 2400, but I get an increase in B frequency vibration in the airframe, so I run it 2500. It still vibrates but at the higher 4-banger frequency that doesn't shake the cockpit quite so much, who knows if it is better for the engine, wires, hoses, etc. Big slow vibrations, or little fast ones - pick your poison. But I don't see things shaking so much, so thats where I cruise. I may be a little over sensitive on vibration, when I overhauled the C-145 (which is 6 cyls) in my first 170, all the reciprocating mass got dynamically balanced by some go fast boys with some very fancy machines, and was glass smooth. I have no idea how they did it. Worked like gangbusters. My feelings were finally assuaged, I thought the first iteration of that engine shook too much, that feeling leftover lots of time spent offshore on inboard boats. If the prop shaft is misaligned to the engine, the boat shakes 1 cycle per rpm, and the repeated bending stresses the shaft are enough that after about 500-1000 hrs, the shaft will twist off. Perfect right angle break. If not stopped by the rudder, prop and shaft depart the boat, accompanied by a huge bang, a runaway engine and a rather large gush of water into the bilge where the shaft was. Been there, done that on a single engine boat, had the pxxx scared out of me, and then with no way to get back to the dirt, floated around for longer than I liked, way too far out to swim to the bank. So I got a little edgy about vibration. There are many ways a Lyc. 4-banger is better than a small barrel Continental, but they always feel to me like they are trying to shake themselves apart. And philosophically speaking, I guess they actually are.

I don't know which is more revolting, Vogon poetry or that many damn wires. Gives me the willies. It's enough to make 45 year old brown woodgrain vac-u-form plastic look pretty reasonable. Gary