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Damaged Nose Gear- AOG


slowflyin

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6 hours ago, slowflyin said:

AC going on jacks today. Belly will be opened up and system checked from front to back. No joy on Mooney email-it bounced back. Maybe they will reply to VM.  

you emailed technicalsupport@mooney.com? Frank Crawford has been amazing lately at helping people.  It shouldn't have bounced.

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2 hours ago, Davidv said:

you emailed technicalsupport@mooney.com? Frank Crawford has been amazing lately at helping people.  It shouldn't have bounced.

Have you looked at "Air Traffic" on the Mooney Corp website lately?  Most of the Models/topics have no postings in months and it seems that the only responses are from other owners.  "Mooney Technical Support" appears to be MIA (if there still is any).

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5 hours ago, Davidv said:

you emailed technicalsupport@mooney.com? Frank Crawford has been amazing lately at helping people.  It shouldn't have bounced.

Glad to hear he is still there! Is Misty Crawford there still too, David? They are both great, but then again, the entire crew is.

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5 hours ago, 1980Mooney said:

Have you looked at "Air Traffic" on the Mooney Corp website lately?  Most of the Models/topics have no postings in months and it seems that the only responses are from other owners.  "Mooney Technical Support" appears to be MIA (if there still is any).

Yes, but that’s not technical support.  Frank (and others at Mooney) respond to many messages each day sent to the email address listed above (which is listed on Mooney website).

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15 minutes ago, Davidv said:

Yes, but that’s not technical support.  Frank (and others at Mooney) respond to many messages each day sent to the email address listed above (which is listed on Mooney website).

It’s the Mooney Corp website. It clearly says that it is “Mooney Technical Support”. If it is not Technical Support perhaps they should stop stating it on the website. 
image.thumb.png.268463c1d05386bf489b3a29762d9a9d.png

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One day.…

Mooney will have that position of web site developer open again….

Maybe the the Mooney of the Month picture will get updated…  Since Erik’s awesome Mooney hasn’t been dethroned in many months…

Imagine an ideal world where everyone flys a Mooney….

:)

 

Ahhhhhh, the weekend has arrived, and weekend rules are in place….

 

PP thoughts only, not a web site developer… I did hire a couple once…

Best regards,

-a-

 

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11 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

Stress relieving, best done in an oven at if memory serves around 800F, but it can be done via an acetylene torch. it’s done to relax the stresses that welding build in from uneven heating and cooling, it’s to help prevent cracking.

But it’s pretty common and well known for 4130 as that’s a very common steel.

‘We used to stress relieve our engine mounts, landing gear, shock mount attach points and a couple of other highly stressed items. 

Some will call it normalizing, which it’s not really, but if the steel were heat treated, it will normalize it.

Googling stress relieving 4130 tubing or similar ought to get some good links.

Its not hard to do or ought not be expensive to have done.

Even though its common to stress relieve 4130 (ask anyone who has welded a fuselage for a homebuilt) we don't have the "approved" drawing from Mooney on how the either "stress relieve" or "heat treat" the nose gear so therefore we can't make the part to comply with its type design.  We can't just guess they stress relived the part. It might actually be heat treated and to what specs we don't know without the approved paperwork.

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7 hours ago, cliffy said:

Even though its common to stress relieve 4130 (ask anyone who has welded a fuselage for a homebuilt) we don't have the "approved" drawing from Mooney on how the either "stress relieve" or "heat treat" the nose gear so therefore we can't make the part to comply with its type design.  We can't just guess they stress relived the part. It might actually be heat treated and to what specs we don't know without the approved paperwork.

LASAR repairs these things don’t they? Call them and ask.

Assuming it’s 4130, I’d be very, very surprised if it’s heat treated as 4130 has very low hardenability meaning it doesn’t heat treat well. Then add in that it has dent tolerances makes me really sure it’s not heat treated. But a simple call should confirm.

 

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26 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

LASAR repairs these things don’t they? Call them and ask.

Assuming it’s 4130, I’d be very, very surprised if it’s heat treated as 4130 has very low hardenability meaning it doesn’t heat treat well.

 

I agree 100% 

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17 minutes ago, cliffy said:

I agree 100% 

It’s just as the supply for parts dries up, we really don’t have much choice. Honestly I’d prefer to buy a repaired one from LASAR, it supports a parts supply and hopefully they are very experienced with the repair and of course have learned to do it better than most.

I’m a new Mooney owner, but it seems that many parts, like limit switches and others we are going to develop our own sources of supply, and others be owner produced parts, and of course repair sometimes when replacement isn’t a option.

Univair and others make parts for my 1946 Cessna, so parts for it are easier and much cheaper than Mooney parts, maybe one day some one like Univair will start producing Mooney parts?

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33 minutes ago, A64Pilot said:

It’s just as the supply for parts dries up, we really don’t have much choice. Honestly I’d prefer to buy a repaired one from LASAR, it supports a parts supply and hopefully they are very experienced with the repair and of course have learned to do it better than most.

I’m a new Mooney owner, but it seems that many parts, like limit switches and others we are going to develop our own sources of supply, and others be owner produced parts, and of course repair sometimes when replacement isn’t a option.

Univair and others make parts for my 1946 Cessna, so parts for it are easier and much cheaper than Mooney parts, maybe one day some one like Univair will start producing Mooney parts?

Unfortunately there are certain parts that would be hard to come by even if Mooney was rolling new planes off the assembly line each month.  There are many suppliers who have gone out of business (not necessarily because of Mooney, but changing technology) so these parts are extremely tough to get.  Or if they don’t go out of business, they are bought and then you’re trying to convince the parent company to produce a limited quantity of a very old part.  I’m not saying this is the case for everything, just acknowledging the challenging reality.

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45 minutes ago, Davidv said:

Unfortunately there are certain parts that would be hard to come by even if Mooney was rolling new planes off the assembly line each month.  There are many suppliers who have gone out of business (not necessarily because of Mooney, but changing technology) so these parts are extremely tough to get.  Or if they don’t go out of business, they are bought and then you’re trying to convince the parent company to produce a limited quantity of a very old part.  I’m not saying this is the case for everything, just acknowledging the challenging reality.

I know, I’ve run into a few of those, like pressure transducers etc.

Sometimes you can find something that will work,and sometimes you have to replace the whole system.

For example my landing gear relays don’t exist anymore, I found a source or two from a junkyard for $1,000 but how do you ensure the airworthiness of a part that you can’t inspect that comes from a junkyard?

Howevef the part number cross matched (thankfully Mooney hadn’t assigned their own part number) andI chose to go that route, as i my opinion new relay’s with the identical form, fit and function are better than unknown parts from a junkyard.

It’s not just Mooney of course, Mooney’s aren’t orphaned, but many aircraft are. Thankfully many FAA inspectors are realistic, not all, but many are.

There is even an AC that addresses parts substitution for older aircraft that parts don’t exist anymore, I have a copy somewhere, I’ll try to find it.

That was easy, in my opinion my J model falls into this. It was manufactured after 1980,but the TC was before 1980.

https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/ac_23-27.pdf

Edited by A64Pilot
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4 hours ago, PT20J said:

There are standard heat treatments once you know the alloy and hardness which could be determined by testing the existing part.

One could go that route and get a DER to sign off on the process and then it is an "Approved" process. Quite possibly repeatable Hmm Sounds like what LASAR does. 

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9 hours ago, A64Pilot said:

LASAR repairs these things don’t they? Call them and ask.

Assuming it’s 4130, I’d be very, very surprised if it’s heat treated as 4130 has very low hardenability meaning it doesn’t heat treat well. Then add in that it has dent tolerances makes me really sure it’s not heat treated. But a simple call should confirm.

 

3 - 4 weeks for the repair. 

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You could of course get a DER, that would make it slam dunk as being a Designee, their data is approved. However I would sign a 337 without a DER once the heat treat level was confirmed, as PT20J said, it’s not difficult to do. Everything that we heat treated at the plant, we also had coupons that were in every heat threat batch, those coupons were tested to confirm that the heat treat was correct, so it’s not difficult.

I want to think it was done with what looked like a drill press that had a point on it and it measured amount fo force required to sink the point a specific depth.

We could easily determine what type of aluminum with a device that measured electrical conductivity, apparently each alloy has a different resistance.

I woud have bet money that the gear wasn’t heat treated, I guess I would have lost that bet

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