Acclaim with 310 HP.

[RobertoTohme]

Well fellows, I did the 310 hp STC to my Acclaim...  So far, I've just flown it once, and recorded the climb performance to compare pre and post Type S conversion; as a standard Acclaim, I was able to reduce my climb time from 3920 ft. elevation at KELP to FL250 by about 3 minutes, running the prop at 2,700 rpm until 8,000 ft and then backing to 2,600 rpm, with whatever MP I could get with WOT but always below 33.5", and a constant 115 IAS (Thanks, GFC700!).  It wasn't as agressive as the record run recorded by Midwest Mooney, but it sure is an improvement over the std 280 hp I previously had; not that it was a slouch before, but it helps in clipping climb times if you constantly do the flight levels as I do, and hence total flight times.  Necessary? absolutely not; Nice to have?  Hell yeah!!   Kudos to Midwest Mooney for getting this STC available for the Acclaim, to Justin at MM for his valuable information, honest answers and help to El Paso Aero for the installation.  I will report results after Type S conversion when it's finished by the end of this month...

 

[randypugh]

Roberto, Is the type S conversion just a cleen-up of the airframe? Also, doesn't it include a different prop? Shouldn't that all inprove? You might be pleasantly surprised. Please keep us posted 

[RobertoTohme]

Yes, Randy; the speed bits of the S are to be installed, as well as a new prop.  I do expect an improvement in performance, but it'll be probably be in the order of 6-7 kts in cruise and still better climb.  My plane was the 2nd. type S sold, but at the time of delivery it wasn't certified yet and hence had to wait for the retrofit until now...  I'll post what improvements I notice after it's done.

 

[Mcstealth]

You have an Type S Acclaim,#2, but you need an STC for the Type "S"  because it wasn,t certified yet????

 

Not following you.

David

 

ps

wish I was you.

[RobertoTohme]

Yes, it was sold as a Type S, but at the time of delivery Mooney hadn't got the FAA certification for the S yet so it was built and delivered as standard, pending FAA certification for retrofit.  Mine is serial #0069, and the first certified type S delivered was number 100.

[RobertoTohme]

On a second note, I don't like the new BMW designed paint scheme of the very latest production....

[fantom]

Nobody, other than Craig from Scheme Designers, likes it either.

[GeorgePerry]

Wow...I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks the paint looks poorly done.

[RobertoTohme]

And who the hell knows how much Mooney paid BMW Designwoks in California to do it...  They "Bangle-ized" Mooney too as they did with the cars; what a shame.

[GeorgePerry]

I have an BMW E90 as my everyday commuter car and it's awesome!  Great solid car, simple silver paint and black interior.  Someone at BMW knows how to design, just not folks that worked on the 5 series or the Mooney   

[fantom]

I'm on my fifth Porsche, and have loved them all. The Porsche-Mooney however left much to be desired.

[GeorgePerry]

I've owned 11 different porsche models over the years and they are great as well.  I raced both porsche and BMW cars with NASA and I have to say that the B-mers really take the abuse well.  Porsches tend to brake esp the water cooled models....but we digress:-) 

[RobertoTohme]

I love my E39 M5...  Classy shape, excellent performer, and no i-drive!  I have a lot of respect for Porsche as well, although I've never owned one; for sports cars, I camp on the Italian side!

[mooniac58]

I tend to be a fan of the Italian breen of sports cars too...although I spend all my money on my Mooney so I cannot afford one!  My father owned 3 Ferrari's throughout his life though, including a Dino 246 and Daytona 365 Coupe.  Perhaps someday I will find a way to earn enough money to afford such a car after paying the communist taxes imposed these days!

[RobertoTohme]

Well, tomorrow my plane is being ferried back to ELP from the Type S conversion...  On wednesday I'll do another pull from 3,920 ft to FL250 to see if there's an improvement in climb time, and of course, check the actual cruise speed increase vs. the standard Acclaim.  Will report back on thursday about it for those interested...

[KSMooniac]

Keep us posted! 

I also agree that the BMW paint scheme is horrid.  The interior is very nice though.  Too bad Mooney blew some money commisioning the BMW folks to come up with that scheme right before the big crash.

I'm also another German car (and motorcycle) fan, and have found many Mooney owners to be as well for some reason!  I have a 1988 M6 and 1999 K1200RS and would love to add an E39 M5 someday when I have more cash, fewer items on the Mooney wish list, and another garage stall!  I still love the E46 3-series too.  The latest generations don't look nearly as "right" as the previous ones, but they are still very nice cars.  My Mooney mentors in college (husband and wife team) had a 325 daily driver and an R-bike of some flavor, as well as a nicely restored Isetta for fun.

[Seth]

I agree, the BMW paint scheme on the Type S is ugly.  And frankly, so is the current 5 series BMW.

That's why I also love my e39 M5 - It's a sleeper with its classic looks and makes me smile all the way to work, or when I head out to see my Mooney!

That being said, I'd love an Acclaim Type S but am very happy with my '67 M20F.

 

[RobertoTohme]

Well, looks like there's consensus about the BMW paint design and the new 5 series...  I don't question the mechanical end of the new 5, just the looks... the E39 generation is a classic BMW look, sober and understated.  I'm lazy today to write about my findings of the type S conversion, so will do that tomorrow...

[Mcstealth]

Darn it Roberto! I will be gone all weekend with no computer! I was looking forward to your report! 10 hours in a 152 with a passenger with body odor is your punishment!!!

Mcstealth

[RobertoTohme]

Hey!  That punishment sounds like back on the days when I was doing my private...  plus that 152 had a tendency to pop my door open at very inappropiate times, so I struck off my list the "door opened in flight" very early in my training; it's nothing more than the wind draft and paper flying all over the place; annoying, yes; emergency? not at all.   I'll do my best to have those results posted later today for all of you interested on them.

Cheers.

[Seth]

FYI - Chris Bangle is leaving BMW

The article copied below has some decent information.

 

Word out of Munich this morning is that Chris Bangle, 52, the U.S.-born, Art
Center-trained designer who has shaped BMW styling since 1992, is leaving
the company to pursue other design work "beyond the automotive industry,"
according to a company statement.

So ends the tenure of a man who is certainly among the most controversial
and derided car designers in history, a man whose name became synonymous
with a kind of artsy over-reach and peculiar, consensus-of-one design
vocabulary. Bangle will forever be remembered for the 2002-08 7-series (E65)
trunk lid, a prominent and distracting form nicknamed the Bangle Butt
(pictured right). The trunk lid, however, was as much Adrian Van Hooydonk's
work as Bangle's. Hooydonk, 44, will succeed Bangle as BMW's chief of global
design.

Far more egregious, in this critic's view, was Bangle's championing of the
so-called "flame-surfacing" design language imprinted on the BMW Z4 sports
car (2002-present), a look that I said at the time "has less the leap and
flicker of fire than the loose luff of wet canvas." The oddly intersecting
accent lines seemed to utterly stop visual forward motion and, when
translated to the new BMW 1-series, suggested the car had somehow broken its
frame. Bangle's determination to educate critics on the virtues of flame
surfacing never paid off. That said, in the Bangle years, BMW's global sales
grew dramatically, and I expect that was part of the reason the company's
board stood by him.

It's an open secret in the car business that after the controversies
surrounding the Z4 and 7-series, Bangle was demoted up in 2003, from head of
BMW brand design to the global design chief for BMW Group, overseeing but
not quite leading the designs of BMW Mini, Rolls-Royce and BMW brand. In
recent years, the fire of flame surfacing has been put out and BMW cars
exhibit a more determined and sober styling.

And it's interesting to note that Bangle joins a growing list of celebrity
car designers -- Henrik Fisker (formerly of BMW and Aston Martin) and Frank
Stephenson (formerly of Mini, Fiat-Ferrari) -- who quit their global
sinecures at the peak of their powers.

Bangle's many critics tend to oversimplify the process of car design, which
is never an inspired brush-to-canvas moment but rather an agonizing slog
through a million compromises dealing with the most debilitating minutiae,
such as country-by-country legal restrictions on headlamp height, the cost
per unit of this piece of trim or that, or dealing with the myriad immovable
"hard points" that come with platform- and parts-sharing. It is also a
highly collaborative effort, in which the head of design gets the credit or
blame regardless of who held the pen originally. Considering what a
miserable, rear-guard action car design is, it's perhaps not surprising that
its most aesthetically ambitious stars give up in frustration.

Other designers -- Philippe Starck comes to mind -- have more talent and
imagination than can find expression in one product line or another, and
perhaps Bangle will start designing buildings, boats, lamps or tableware.
But it's unlikely that the car business will ever again see a single auteur
with the power to so utterly shape a global brand. Bangle will be missed.

For your entertainment, we've compiled a little Bangle retrospective.

-- Dan Neil

[RobertoTohme]

Have you guys seen Bangle's latest, called "GINA"?  As a design concept, very nice; Feasible?  mmmm....  I need to smoke AND drink the same thing those guys did while designing it.

[Seth]

Findings of the Type S conversion?  I wish I could have been flying this weekend - my plane is in the middle of its annual.  It was 65 degrees in Maryland today.

And for those who don't know what "GINA" is, or if you know and want to see the video, here is the link for the explanation:

http://jalopnik.com/395588/bmw-gina-light-visionary-model-revealed-creepy

It's actually a really neat idea where the skin of the car is like an elastic cloth as oppose to metal so that it can change shape as needed for different missions, configurations, and aspects.  It's worth watching, maybe in 20 years we'll see a production car with some sort of evolution of "GINA" built in.

[RobertoTohme]

Well, the dreaded report...

3 kts. gain solid, 4 at times; plane flies just like before.  I was expecting to get the 7 kts. difference betwen the advertised speeds std vs. type s, but apparently fell right in the middle.  In fairness to the plane, the winds aloft during my first flight were 40-50 kts mostly crosswind, slight tailwind component (8 kts), and my experience with that kind of x-winds is that the final TAS diminishes a little.  It'll take a few more flights to truly assess the average knot gain.

Now, about the 310 hp upgrade, it's worth every penny I paid for it....  It brings the performance I wanted to climb out of the nasty stuff quicker, get sooner to the FL's, and hence reduce my total enroute times.

[Mcstealth]

Quote: RobertoTohme

Well, the dreaded report...

3 kts. gain solid, 4 at times; plane flies just like before.  I was expecting to get the 7 kts. difference betwen the advertised speeds std vs. type s, but apparently fell right in the middle.  In fairness to the plane, the winds aloft during my first flight were 40-50 kts mostly crosswind, slight tailwind component (8 kts), and my experience with that kind of x-winds is that the final TAS diminishes a little.  It'll take a few more flights to truly assess the average knot gain.

Now, about the 310 hp upgrade, it's worth every penny I paid for it....  It brings the performance I wanted to climb out of the nasty stuff quicker, get sooner to the FL's, and hence reduce my total enroute times.