Better Than New: The Full Refurbishment of N205J

[Rmag]

 Better than New:

The Refurbishment of N205J

Mooney N205J is a 1987 M20J model “205 Special Edition (SE)”.  It differed from other M20J “201’s” at the time in that it incorporated a few changes:  

1.       Fully enclosed gear doors

2.       Rounded window lines

3.       28 volt electrical system

4.       Electric cowl flaps with infinite adjustment

5.       Upturned wingtips with forward facing recognition lights and aft facing position lights

6.       Gear extension speed increased from 132 to 140 knots

The 205 SE came right as the general aviation market was in decline, so only seventy-seven 205 SE’s were built spanning two years.

N205J was previously owned by a business associate of ours.  N205J was hangar kept most of its life.  It had original factory avionics, paint, and interior and was a low time aircraft with only 1885.5 hours.  It had Precise Flight Speed Brakes installed.

So why did we put so much money into a 1987 Mooney?  I am one of the owners of SureFlight Aircraft Completions which specializes in paint, interiors, and avionics.  We made it a “project plane”.  We worked on it when we had any gaps in our schedule.  Now that it is complete, we have a demonstration plane to show and fly customers that showcases SureFlight’s capabilities.   It’s an awesome Mooney to fly!

First stop was Henry Weber Mooney Authorized Service Center at neighboring KLNS to perform the pre-purchase inspection.  The important thing for us was to have a good airframe and engine to start with.  We took care of some maintenance on the airframe, overhauled the prop, bought a new governor, put new gear shock discs in, etc.  We had them complete an annual at the time as well.

We had the engine sent out to Columbia Aircraft Services for an Inspect and Replace as Needed (“IRAN”) which included new Camshaft, Lifters, Bearings and Rings.  While it was there, we had the engine converted from the Lycoming IO-360-A3B6D to the IO-360-A3B6 specification to eliminate the D3000 dual magnetos in a single housing, driven by a single driveshaft.  The engine now has two separate fully independent Bendix magnetos.  We had the cylinders removed to be sent out for nickel plating.

 

After the engine came back, Henry Weber reinstalled it with new Lord mounts and made sure that the engine and engine cowlings were properly aligned.

We added GAMIjectors calibrated fuel injection nozzles and then went to work on the full refurbishment of N205J.

 

 

Avionics:

 The aircraft was equipped with a factory original avionics suite from 1986, except the addition of an Apollo GPS.

It all came out. 

All the wiring was removed and replaced.  A plastic panel is created to make sure everything looks correct before fabricating the metal:

Yokes are painted black and a metal panel is installed:

And then filled with equipment:

·         Fully Electronic panel; Eliminated Vacuum System

·         Garmin G500 flight deck with Synthetic Vision

·         Garmin GAD 43e autopilot interface for G500

·         Garmin GTN 750 GPS/Nav/Comm Navigator with Telligence Voice Control

·         Garmin GMA 35c Bluetooth enabled remote audio panel

·         Garmin GTX 345R ADS-B In/Out remote transponder

·         Garmin GNC 255 Nav/Comm

·         King KFC-150 autopilot (the only thing that remained from the old panel)

·         L3 Avionics ESI-500 Standby Instrument with:  Altitude, Attitude, Slip/skid, Vertical speed, Aircraft track, Synthetic Vision option, Navigation option. Magnetic heading option.

·         JP Instruments EDM 930 Primary computer for RPM, Manifold Pressure, Oil, Fuel, Battery, Engine data.

·         AirGizmos iPad Mini 4 panel dock

·         Nimbus Aviation Electroluminescent Circuit Breaker overlay.

·         ACK E-04 GPS Emergency Locator Transmitter

·         Guardian Aero 451-101 Panel Mount CO Detector

·         MidContinent MD93 Digital Clock/USB Charger.

 

  

Paint:

 We painted a new King Air 300 for the Mayo Clinic earlier in 2016.  We loved their colors.  We knew that these would be the colors we would eventually use on the Mooney.

 

 
Stripping:  Everything that is not stripped is covered in foil.

 

Windows are removed to be replaced with Great Lakes Aero Windows SC (Solar Control) Grey installed with Extra thick .250” windshield.

All flight controls and gear doors are removed to be painted separately, airframe is etched and alodined in preparation for epoxy primer.

After primer, an Axalta White Pearl base color is applied. N205J is painted in all Pearlescent paint which requires a clearcoat after each color is applied.  This is one of the reasons pearlescent paints cost more.

Paint Scheme Layout:

Axalta Cumulous Grey Pearl is applied to undercarriage, wheel wells, airframe, and then clearcoated.

Axalta Sable Pearl accent stripes are applied and then clearcoated.

Final Prep for the Axalta Dark Blue Pearl:

After all the pearlescent colors are applied and clearcoated, exterior placarding is applied, and the entire aircraft is re-sanded for a final overall layer of clearcoat.  This gives the airplane a wet, glossy look and deepens the color, smooths edge lines between accent stripes, seals the placards, and it also provides a more durable and cleanable finish because you do not cut into the color when polishing.

Flight controls are hung and painted separately:

Cowlings and access panels are installed with new stainless steel hardware.

Flight controls are balanced and then reinstalled.

  

Interior:

Unfortunately, we forgot to get some good “before pics” of the interior.  It had blue velour seats with aged and yellowing plastic panels.

Old seat covers off.

Repaint the seat frames.

New covers sewn for the new foam buildups.

Upholstered seats with custom Mooney Logo headrests.

We repaired cracks in several of the plastics, and repainted with a textured paint to hide any old imperfections.  We decided against covering the panels in ultra-leather to save weight.

We fabricated a hatch behind the hole for the windshield bar that holds the compass for easy R&R of the glare shield.  Painted a flat textured black.  Looks like new.

The interior goes back together with repainted plastics, new carpet, new door seals, and new upholstered seats.

After it was all complete, we put the aircraft on scales.  The new weight and balance was 17 lbs lighter than before.  We also performed the gross weight increase to increase the gross weight from 2,740 to 2,900 giving the aircraft a new useful load of 988 lbs.

Mooney N205J – Ready for Takeoff!

 

Update 6/21/2018

Since Garmin came out with the G500 TXi we updated the Mooney by removing the Garmin G500 and JPI EDM 930 and replacing it with the G500 TXi with integrated Engine Information System (EIS).

Here are photos of the conversion:

EDIT for 2021:  L-3 ESI 500 removed and replaced with Garmin GI 275 backup instrument and a Garmin GFC 500 Autopilot. 
 

 

[DXB]

What a gorgeous and thorough update!!  I guess not everyone does it slow and incremental.  

[mike_elliott]

Outstanding refurb. This might displace N9163Q as the nicest J in the fleet..Ill have to fly it to compare

 

[M20FanJesse]

I literally have never been more jealous of an airplane. That thing is exactly as I would do it, paint scheme and all. Wow that blue is incredible! Great job!!

[rbridges]

I'd never fly the plane. I'd be worried about a rock chip or scratch in the paint. 

[Garryowen]

43 minutes ago, M20FanJesse said:

Wow that blue is incredible!

Even more impressive in person. A real showpiece.

I see my newly painted doors in the background 

Edited April 19, 2017 by Garryowen

[bonal]

Very very nice work and results just wondering if you kept track of and how many man hours were expended to achieve this magnificent looking Mooney.

[Mcstealth]

Why are you showing this to a bunch of cheap bastards like us?  

[Danb]

WOW. WOW. WOW 

[KSMooniac]

Well done! I hope you make some money on this one and thus encourage more full-boat projects like this.

Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk

[madjano]

Excellent

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[Bennett]

Very nicely done. And this makes the case why Mooney should not attempt to resurrect the J. I had several conversations with Jerry Chen before and after he became the head of Mooney, and also with Ron Blum, chief engineer of the M-10 project. There are many excellent J airframes out there, and re-doing the panel, re-doing the interior, good paint, and bringing an engine up to date can be done within a $200,000 envelope. The result is a functionally "new" Mooney, new leather smell and all. And, the owner can choose all the options he wants without considering standardization. There is no way Mooney can build a new J for $200,000. Several of us on MS have followed the total refurbishment pathway, and we haven't had the benefit of being in the aviation business. Yet the results I have seen have been outstanding, and the costs fall into the 200K envelope.

 

 

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[thinwing]

Very nice ,...love the pearl and blue..

[Rmag]

4 hours ago, DXB said:

What a gorgeous and thorough update!!  I guess not everyone does it slow and incremental.  

Since we were doing the work between paying jobs, I didn't know how long this was going to take us, so I decided to just wait until we were done.  It was half a year of work on and off so it would have been a very slow and incremental thread!

[Rmag]

3 hours ago, rbridges said:

I'd never fly the plane. I'd be worried about a rock chip or scratch in the paint. 

Fortunately, we know how to fix that problem pretty easily

[Rmag]

Thanks for the nice comments guys.

Here are a few videos I figured I would share as well.  They didn't really belong in the original post...

The first is doing a gear swing test as we put everything back together.  I used the opportunity to test doing an manual gear deployment so I knew how to do it if the unfortunate event ever arises.  Its not that exciting of a video, but if you never saw a manual swing, here you go...

The other video I just took tonight.  I was testing a coupled WAAS approach with the G500, Gad 43e, GTN 750 and the King KFC 150 autopilot.  With the Synthetic Vision, the Flight Path Marker (Green Ball) lines up right on the end of the runway on final approach.  This was really cool to see.  I had to end the video kind of quick so I could reduce speed and fly the plane

 

[DMJones]

Stunning airplane.  Really nice work.

[N6758N]

Looks great Dan, can't wait to come to come see it in person!

[carusoam]

Nicely done Rmag!

Thanks for sharing the deep details.

Best regards,

-a-

[LANCECASPER]

That should be the new paint scheme for the Acclaim.

[Rmag]

That's where I got the paint scheme.  It was a rendering on Mooney's website in 2016 for an Acclaim.  But it was red, gold, and black.

[mike_elliott]

9 hours ago, Rmag said:

That's where I got the paint scheme.  It was a rendering on Mooney's website in 2016 for an Acclaim.  But it was red, gold, and black.

You mean this one?

[jwilcoxon78]

Wow!  Great job.  She's beautiful. 

[jkhirsch]

I'll say it...Andrew's paint scheme is better

[Rmag]

41 minutes ago, mike_elliott said:

You mean this one?

Close, the rendering  on the website had gold where the silver is. 

I was torn between blue and red. We did a really nice looking red pearl on a helicopter for the owner of the Arizona Cardinals. 

I wound up using that red for the little Mooney logo on my tail.