Landing gear problem

[ShuRugal]

16 hours ago, PilotCoyote said:

Not a good idea to fly without the boot...! 

wasn't there someone who got their ailerons jammed when a pencil fell through the gap because their boot was gone?

[Prior owner]

2 hours ago, ShuRugal said:

wasn't there someone who got their ailerons jammed when a pencil fell through the gap because their boot was gone?

There is an NTSB report on incident. It was a flashlight. Jammed the ailerons and also the gear for a while

[steingar]

Good news is I think the lube fixed it.  Dropping it off at the avionics shop (my number 1 comm gets to visit the radio hospital) the gear locked down quite easily.  Many thanks to Mooneyspace for yet another fix to my never-ending series of problems.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, PilotCoyote said:

There is an NTSB report on incident. It was a flashlight. Jammed the ailerons and also the gear for a while

Mooney issued S/I M20-118 covering inspection of internal control boot sealing.

Clarence

[steingar]

Plenty of bad news on this end. First, I had an in-air emergency today. First time after a long layoff after paying the avionics bill drained me dry. So I wanted to fly out to a cheap gas airport to fill it full of gas and do a couple landings.  Everything is working fine until I lower the gear. I cannot seat the bar. 

I do some quick ADM. The bar stays up and insecure, power stays low so I don’t overspeed.  I’m at a busy airport with lots of traffic.  I turn away from it and activate the autopilot, just using it as a wing leveler. I then put every bit of muscle into pulling up the knob on the J-bar. At last it clicks, the gear is down and locked. 

I fly it that way the 20 miles back to my home drome.  I’m calling the mechanics on Monday. I don’t have jacks, I don’t have the money to buy jacks, and I’m not kludging a set together with a length of pipe, a pair of pantyhose, and some bubble gum, or whatever it is you guys do. I’ll call them and pay.

The good news is even after a long layoff and little currency I could still fly the aircraft and even do a halfway decent landing where I kinda new where my energy was, a welcome change. Some more good news is my ADM is in good shape. This could have been quite the deal. As it is no bent metal and a bit of a story.

The other bad news is my #$&@%,,@%$#!!! Radios still don’t work worth squat.

[Hank]

Sorry, @steingar! Good ADM and troubleshooting! Glad you made it home safely if slowly.  I've done the same thing, with a front gear door flapping . . .

Please tell me your mechanic is better than your avionics shop! When I was at KHTW in South Point (as much as it hurts to say "south" and "Ohio" together!  ), we always used the avionics shop at New Philadelphia, KPHD--a good field for an academic . . . Ben always did good work. 888-GPS-DUDE.

Good luck with everything!

[MyNameIsNobody]

Triflow?  Keep a can of compressed air.  That $%^& is amazing....

[Yetti]

Good job @steingarfor passing the test.

[carusoam]

Did the plane reveal the reason why?

Were you able to use a steep bank to improve your leverage?

was it positioning the bar or moving the handle to engage the challenge?

a small piece of carpet made it difficult to get my C’s JBar in place...

Look at even the tiniest of things getting in the way...  or the handle getting loose and changing the detail...

PP thoughts only...

Best regards,

-a-

[Bob_Belville]

This might not be your issue but FWIW a few years ago I took the handle/sleeve part of the JBar apart and cleaned it thoroughly. After 50 years there was a fair amount of grime that the spring had to overcome to push the sleeve up. With the plane on jacks and the JBar out of the socket it is easy to evaluate whether the sleeve moves freely and whether the spring is adjusted to push the sleeve up with enough force to snap it into the socket. 

[steingar]

The weird thing is the holder thingie is nearly brand new.  I doubt it have 50 hours in service.  I've relieved this before with some lubricant, but my concern is it comes back. The day I forget the lube and I can't seat the thing I'll get to total my aircraft.  Not a very good alternative.

I had no trouble swinging the bar, never have.  Its just seating the knob in its holder.  It doesn't want to go.

My hope is my mechanics can get the thing up on jacks and really give that holder a good going over, something I can't do in the air without another pilot flying the airplane.

[Andy95W]

Is it easier to seat if you push in the thumb latch as you push the slider up? That might be another place to shoot some silicone spray.  You can lubricate and slide that latch on the ground, not on jacks, if you want.

[MARZ]

On 8/30/2018 at 6:13 PM, M20Doc said:

Mooney issued S/I M20-118 covering inspection of internal control boot sealing.

Clarence

Do you have a link to that one?

 

Thanks - Mike

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Mike Ropers said:

Do you have a link to that one?

 

Thanks - Mike

Here you go,

https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4147179/technical_documents/service_instructions/sim20-118.pdf?t=1540933493827

All service documents are available at :

https://www.mooney.com/service 

just select your model at the bottom of the page, then select what type of document you want.

Clarence

 

[steingar]

Just talked to the head mechanic at my home airfield.  I'm going to let the mechanics handle this one.  Yeah, maybe I could spray lube not the holder thingie in flight, but seems a lot safer to do a gear swing on jacks and work it that way.  Way, way cheaper than a gear up, which is what I thought I was going to have Saturday.  The bad news is they're not going to be able to do anything until next week because they have to repair another M20c that fell off its home-made jacks and made some nifty holes in the wing.

So once again I'm down.  This not flying thing is getting really, really old.

[Hank]

2 hours ago, steingar said:

Just talked to the head mechanic at my home airfield.  I'm going to let the mechanics handle this one.  Yeah, maybe I could spray lube not the holder thingie in flight, but seems a lot safer to do a gear swing on jacks and work it that way.  Way, way cheaper than a gear up, which is what I thought I was going to have Saturday.  The bad news is they're not going to be able to do anything until next week because they have to repair another M20c that fell off its home-made jacks and made some nifty holes in the wing.

So once again I'm down.  This not flying thing is getting really, really old.

OUCH!! At least your plane is in better shape than that one . . . .  <looking for the silver lining in your current cloud>

[steingar]

So this totally deserves an update. After a few hours of attention by the mechanics at my home airport the bar works better than it ever has. Retracting the gear the bar easily seats itself on the holder on the floor, far easier than it ever did.  It sits in its panel holder so we’ll I wasn’t even certain I had the gear locked. I would recommend this to anyone with a J-bar Mooney. You won’t believe the difference.

Of course, everything else is going to hell. The knob for the fresh air vent on the ceiling fell off and is now amount the missing, along with one of the screws that holds the headset jack. Oh, and I now have a big nifty crack in my glareshield.

And my expensive new radios still don’t work worth a crap.

[Shadrach]

On 11/4/2018 at 12:04 PM, steingar said:

The weird thing is the holder thingie is nearly brand new.  I doubt it have 50 hours in service.  I've relieved this before with some lubricant, but my concern is it comes back. The day I forget the lube and I can't seat the thing I'll get to total my aircraft.  Not a very good alternative.

I had no trouble swinging the bar, never have.  Its just seating the knob in its holder.  It doesn't want to go.

My hope is my mechanics can get the thing up on jacks and really give that holder a good going over, something I can't do in the air without another pilot flying the airplane.

I’m betting this had nothing to do with the new down-lock. 

Edited November 25, 2018 by Shadrach

[Shadrach]

3 hours ago, steingar said:

So this totally deserves an update. After a few hours of attention by the mechanics at my home airport the bar works better than it ever has. Retracting the gear the bar easily seats itself on the holder on the floor, far easier than it ever did.  It sits in its panel holder so we’ll I wasn’t even certain I had the gear locked. I would recommend this to anyone with a J-bar Mooney. You won’t believe the difference.

Of course, everything else is going to hell. The knob for the fresh air vent on the ceiling fell off and is now amount the missing, along with one of the screws that holds the headset jack. Oh, and I now have a big nifty crack in my glareshield.

And my expensive new radios still don’t work worth a crap.

Can you give us a technical explanation of what was wrong?

[steingar]

7 hours ago, Shadrach said:

Can you give us a technical explanation of what was wrong?

The gear mechanism was in need of lubrications on both sides, the holders in the panel and the floor. Now that they’re lubbricated they work far better. The bar springs into place with no problem on either end. 

[Shadrach]

12 minutes ago, steingar said:

The gear mechanism was in need of lubrications on both sides, the holders in the panel and the floor. Now that they’re lubbricated they work far better. The bar springs into place with no problem on either end. 

Interesting. Neither socket in my plane has ever been lubed. I’m surprised this caused the symptoms you described.

[HRM]

12 hours ago, steingar said:

So this totally deserves an update. After a few hours of attention by the mechanics at my home airport the bar works better than it ever has. Retracting the gear the bar easily seats itself on the holder on the floor, far easier than it ever did.  It sits in its panel holder so we’ll I wasn’t even certain I had the gear locked. I would recommend this to anyone with a J-bar Mooney. You won’t believe the difference.

Of course, everything else is going to hell. The knob for the fresh air vent on the ceiling fell off and is now amount the missing, along with one of the screws that holds the headset jack. Oh, and I now have a big nifty crack in my glareshield.

And my expensive new radios still don’t work worth a crap.

When it rains, it pours...

[steingar]

10 hours ago, Shadrach said:

Interesting. Neither socket in my plane has ever been lubed. I’m surprised this caused the symptoms you described.

I was told that mechanics disassembled, cleaned, and lubricated both mechanisms.  They now function far, far better than they have during my ownership of the Mooney.  Indeed I had no idea it was supposed to work this well.  I would recommend this to anyone  with manual gear retraction.

That said, I've only swung the bar on my own airplane, so for all i know every Mooney out there works just like mine does now.  But I've had a couple CFIs familiar with Mooneys in mine, and neither made noises about how difficult the bar was to set.  These airplanes are all as old as dirt, so it is very possible that yours could work far better than it does now.

[Shadrach]

39 minutes ago, steingar said:

I was told that mechanics disassembled, cleaned, and lubricated both mechanisms.  They now function far, far better than they have during my ownership of the Mooney.  Indeed I had no idea it was supposed to work this well.  I would recommend this to anyone  with manual gear retraction.

That said, I've only swung the bar on my own airplane, so for all i know every Mooney out there works just like mine does now.  But I've had a couple CFIs familiar with Mooneys in mine, and neither made noises about how difficult the bar was to set.  These airplanes are all as old as dirt, so it is very possible that yours could work far better than it does now.

You may be right.  However, I personally do the gear swing at every annual and it is smooth and needs little encouragement to lock down.   It's smartly designed so that you encounter the most resistance where you have the most momentum...at the mid point (~45 degrees). This should be the case in either direction.   If it isn't, something is wrong.

[steingar]

5 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

You may be right.  However, I personally do the gear swing at every annual and it is smooth and needs little encouragement to lock down.   It's smartly designed so that you encounter the most resistance where you have the most momentum...at the mid point (~45 degrees). This should be the case in either direction.   If it isn't, something is wrong.

When I'm flying I swing it at 80 mph.  It is quite easy, though you are correct, the most resistance is right where you said.  I've never had trouble swinging the gear, my problems were always in locking it.  Thankfully those are in the rear view mirror now.