MooneyMark

Mine is starting to crack around the screws. Should you have a nice one, you’d like to part with, please let me know! Needs to ship overseas (Netherlands).

With the gauges on the wings and in the cockpit near zero, my M20K never takes more fuel then 50 gallons at the pump. The capacity is 76 gallons so I always land with way more fuel on board then I think. Yesterday I pushed my flight a little longer with the gauges uncomfortably reading 1 gallon and both the low fuel annunciators burning, yet the calculated landing fuel on board was 18 gallons. She took 60 gallons this time, so I guess the calculated fuel on board wins. Some uneasy flying tho. I refueled with the nose a little higher then on a completely level surface. Does that impact the amount of fuel I can add to the tanks? When refueling, the fuel gets up to those ‘anti-siphon’ doors easily. But then the topping up starts. This seems it could go on endlessly, if I just rock the wings a little back and forth. When do you guys say, this is full? I always fly with a big fuel margin, but to never use about one third of the fuel on board is silly, so I thought I’d dig in and see if it was really there. And it was. I stayed close to the airport by the way. Good to get to know the aircraft a little better again. It was a sad day for flying, last weekend we lost three young dutch glider pilots in two separate accidents. I started out flying gliders and I heard the ELT blaring on the 121.5 from the last crash, gave me the shivers. Stay safe!

Up in the air again, I met up with a good friend who took some air-to-air shots. Had to slow the Mooner down and ad some flaps to be able to stay in formation, the other ship was a tad slower. Things of beauty, the airplanes we fly!

It was a comfy 22 degrees, in the sun at the beach it felt like summer!

Just a short video to capture the vibe of a weekend to Texel (Island in The Netherlands).

Folowing with interest, what does one do if you have your engine IRAN’ned? Send it over to the ayatollah?

You can drop me a mail on mark.perlot AT icloud.com and I'm happy to send you my details.

Not sure if you havent's contacted me already, I had contact with a someone from Switzerland earlier. I am willing to consider selling my 252, it's listed here: M20K 252

Training has been slow the past six weeks, I did some practice runs to EHGG but this weekend I’ll be back at the flightschool. My dad passed away exactly one week ago, we operated the Mooney together and maintenance was completed just in time to do a very emotiononal farewel pass at his funeralservice. We both loved flying and we loved flying the Mooney together. He followed progress on maintenance right up to his passing and was thrilled to hear they finaly found a ‘smoking gun’ and the cause for the misterious oil consumption. I was in tears because at that time my dad was in the ICU fighting for his life and the doctors were still trying to figure out what was killing him. I said ‘dad, they fixed the Mooney, they will fix you too.’ Regretfully it wasn’t meant to be, he would have loved to take her up once more.

This is the little spring we found in the oilfilter. I suspect this debris could also be to blame for the failure of the automatic wastegate, it is a hydraulicaly operated system.

The e-mail my mechanic sent to Mooney and all other parties involved sorting my engine out. Maybe it can be of use for anyone else, so just putting it out there. Mind you, they checked the cilinders for oilleakage with an endoscope and had no reason to suspect the valvestem seals. ”Hi Guys, For a number of years we've been trying to solve the mystery of the oil coming from the exhaust tailpipe of a Mooney M20K with a TSIO360MB engine. (factory new 1989, 1168 TT, no major repairs been done to it apart from 1 cylinder change 2 years ago) Every time the aircraft was started up or flown the RH nose landing gear door and belly where wet of oil coming out of the tailpipe. At some point the turbocharger was changed. There was always about a cup of oil standing in the turbine housing. This didn't cure the problem. The one way valves in the oil system to/from the turbo where cleaned several times and eventually changed for new ones..... unfortunately no joy. We've checked the scavenge pump but it seemed OK. At some point the the starter clutch was broken and the complete housing was changed including the scavenge pump. We hoped that this would fix it..... No.... During a 100 hrs inspection some metal spring particles where found in the oil filter. Small bits like a lipseal spring. This gave me the idea to have a look at the intake valve guide seals since they have this kind of spring installed on the seals. I removed the valve springs and found 5 out of 6 seals being damaged. On 3 of them the springs where completely gone and on 2 others the seal was partially broken but the spring still in place. The only good seal was installed on a cylinder which I changed about 2 years ago. I guess that the one on the old cylinder was damaged too. I changed all 6 valve guide seals. Ran the engine and no more oil from the exhaust tail pipe. The aircraft has made several flights/starts since and so far good news. I thought this can be helpful to share. Greetings, Martijn”

Welcome WL, I'm not much help for you, had one mag failure but found out during run-up. I hope it all works out for you! For the other posters: how come the EGT goes up with one faulty mag? I'd imagine less mixture being burnt and thus a lower EGT...?

If it can break, it will at some point! I’ll keep you posted, thank you all for your input

He has added it to his list of possible causes. But he said they hardly break...

Thanks!