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Hello All We were 2-3 minutes from taking off in our Mooney M20E when the engine suddenly quit. It recovered briefly when the throttle was pulled back halfway, but then quit for good. Successful off-field landing; no injuries; no damage. Full tanks, both sumped 45 minutes after fueling. Full-power runup before takeoff revealed no anomalies. Fuel selector on left tank; boost pump on throughout the episode. Mixture rich. Field elevation 2,000 feet. Altitude when engine failed about 3,500 feet. Post-incident inspection shows good fuel flow from both tanks, good operation of fuel selector valve. Hoses from pump to servo secure, hose from servo to injection distributor secure. Only defect is missing full-rich stop on fuel injection servo. We’re having the servo rebuilt, but we’re not confident that’s the problem. Engine ran strong during prior 10hr X/C. Any ideas?

The company I work for is a software company that creates software that sits on top of control systems such as SCADA, DCS and the like. We historize and visualize the data from the underlying systems. We can also look for events in the data and then notify for out of range events. I just read a facebook post on how the person's #3 valve stuck open. The causes of sticky valves are known. Bad Lycoming design for oil delivery to the guide shafts, coking of the oil, wobble test, rope trick, conditions the engine is operated under, reaming of the valve guides to remove the coked oil. (Yes I got the chance to see a valve hammered out with a punch and hammer and then got to ream the guide) So will an engine monitor and a historization of the data show that a valve is about to stick, or come apart prior to the event happening? Would the user of the engine monitor know what the monitor is telling them to know? If the engine monitor can tell, then what does it not pop up a message that says. "hey just wanted to let you know valve 3 is getting sticky and at some point could stick fully open"

Took my 1977 M20J out for a test flight today after having the engine torn down from finding lots of metal in the oil filter at annual inspection. (Only had 250 hrs since major) Start-up was silky smooth, the run up and climb out were normal, aside from a small acorn nut coming loose from the vertical compass, which i thought to myself, "we've had our glitch for this flight "...All temps and pressure's in the normal range as indicated by the EDM 730 as well as the top cluster...Approx 30-35 miles north west of Calgary at 7300' the oil pressure suddenly dropped to "0" and the engine began running rough to say the least...There was no oil mist on the windshield to obscure my vision..I managed to call "Calgary Terminal" and informed them of my situation and that i planned on putting down at Sundre CFN7 (3663') approx 8-10 miles at my 12 o'clock..with the runway in sight. I had plenty of altitude to spare.. Calgary Terminal gave me the frequency for Sundre, i quickly tuned them in and made the call that i had an engine failure and would be landing "runway 32 full stop" no call back from any traffic, switching back to Calgary terminal freq. to sign off with them and thank them for the info, the radio was breaking up quite a bit as i was nearing final at Sundre..Coming into final at Sundre, the wind was at my nose by about 3-5 kts saving the gear and 1 notch of flaps until short final to make sure we made the field. She touched down just as the stall horn began to squeak, and rolled to a stop clear of the runway just on the edge of the apron. There was a Cessna or older lear that came by at low altitude as i was exiting the aircraft, no doubt they had heard the call over the airwaves and decided they had the time to check in on me..Thanks for that ! I gave them a clear thumbs up, and they turned and flew back towards Calgary.. For the type of failure that occurred, it could not have turned out better. Now we just have (only) an engine to replace..Lets hope there's warranty ! I will put up a couple pics for now of a part in question, and the beautifully busted up crankcase !