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Last July, @chrixxer graciously shared a "never again" story about foreign material in the intake of his M20F here: Mooneyspace collectively identified this as a portion of the ram air door seal. I got an uneasy feeling when I read the story, because we've never replaced the ram air door seal in 15 years of ownership. In fact, there's no record of ours ever having been replaced in the logs, and I think there's a good chance it's original from 1976. Last fall, I took a close look at the seal, and it definitely showed signs of cracking. I made a note to look at replacing it during the annual this spring, and ordered a new seal from LASAR a couple of weeks ago. So... we removed the ram air door yesterday, and found this: Here's what it looks like after drilling out the rivets and removing the aluminum plate "sandwich" around the seal: New seal from LASAR was only about $60, and I got to practice my riveting skills: It's not difficult to remove the door. Just remove the air filter, pull the ram air knob to open the door, and remove the three screws that secure the actuating plate to the door itself. After doing so, the door slides right off the actuating plate, and can be pulled out the front of the cowl. Yes, you have to drill out the old rivets and install new ones, but I'm a total noob at this, and I managed to do it without damaging anything (I only had to re-do 3 of the 9 rivets. ). For those of you with the ram air door - whether you use it or not - strongly encourage you to take a look and consider replacing the seal if you haven't done so in a while. When you get to looking at how the assembly goes together, it's pretty obvious that if a piece of the seal comes loose, it just goes right into the fuel servo. At $60 for the seal and maybe 1-2 hours of labor for a professional (it took me about four with adult supervision), it's cheap insurance against a potentially catastrophic failure.

Hello Mooney Spacers, Im a pretty new owner of a 1967 M20e. just out of annual I'm concerned that the Ram air door doesn't seal well at the top of the door. The cable actually pulled loose right after annual, but I resecured it at the very end of the cable, so it looks as sealed as it will be. I can pass a card through the top of the door without friction. Is this ok? Normal for this door? I'm concerned that some dust will enter the engine. thanks, Mr. Obsessive Ron