Gear up project J

[Andy95W]

1 hour ago, EricJ said:

There's a trick to stack quarters/washers/shims/whatever in between the coils while the gear is down, then let it up a bit.   The washers/shims will keep the spring long and take tension off the gear connection.

This exactly. Works great, took about $3 worth of cheap ass washers from Harbor Freight. 

[Elijah]

That's a good idea! I was gonna make the tool tonight but this sounds easier. Thanks! 

[N201MKTurbo]

13 minutes ago, Elijah said:

That's a good idea! I was gonna make the tool tonight but this sounds easier. Thanks! 

I have the official Mooney tool. The washers work way better. The tool helps with getting the spring off. the washers work better for putting it on. I've never tried putting washers in the spring for taking it off, but that would probably work too.

[Elijah]

The washers worked pretty well. Got the gear leg off and cleaned up, see before and after pics. Now working on the wheel well, wow that is nasty. I think there were some attempted fuel tank repairs in here, there's some nasty gooey silicone like material squeezed into the joints around the spar. Lots of old dried on grease and dirt. What a mess. Any good tricks on cleaning these out? lol.... 

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by Elijah

[Fly Boomer]

2 hours ago, Elijah said:

The washers worked pretty well. Got the gear leg off and cleaned up, see before and after pics. Now working on the wheel well, wow that is nasty. I think there were some attempted fuel tank repairs in here, there's some nasty gooey silicone like material squeezed into the joints around the spar. Lots of old dried on grease and dirt. What a mess. Any good tricks on cleaning these out? lol.... 

Result looks great, but that angle grinder looks pretty aggressive for airplane work.

[Elijah]

22 minutes ago, Fly Boomer said:

Result looks great, but that angle grinder looks pretty aggressive for airplane work.

That's a buffer, for polishing stuff :-)  Unrelated project. 

[Elijah]

Good news, the wheel well cleanup and gear work is mostly complete. I had the gear legs powder coated and I stripped and painted the gear wells while they were out. A nasty job for sure and took a long time. However, it is done now and looks pretty nice. And most importantly, the gear legs and spar should be safe from any corrosion for awhile. 

I have all the belly skins ready to go and the two rear ones are riveted in place. I've made up new brake lines and went thru the calipers. Right now I'm trying to get the system bled. There's no fluid in the passenger side to put enough pressure on the shuttle valves to switch them over so I can push fluid up into that side. Gotta read up on the technique for that. 

Anyway, it's still moving forward albeit slowly!

[Elijah]

This was a fun side project, making a patch for the lower gear door, it was slightly skinned up from the fateful landing. I am pretty happy how well it came out, that's the first time I ever tried to make a compound curve in aluminum. 

[EricJ]

Looking good!   Glad to see it coming along.

 

[Elijah]

The flap corners were also skinned up so I made replacements. Same for the inboard flap hinges. One side only the fairing was damaged, on the other side both the fairing and the arm needed replaced. I ordered them from Mooney through LASAR, however the pilot holes do not line up well at all with the mating parts. I learned you need to ask for no pilot holes, undrilled if you're planning on matching it to an existing part. 

[Elijah]

On 11/1/2023 at 7:34 PM, Echo said:

I bought my plane with a GDL82 ADSB solution installed.  It is in the belly and works in tandem with your existing transponder.  Mine works great.  i like that you don't have to update the transponder.   

I actually came across a gdl 82 for a good deal so that is the ADSB route I'm going. My transponder was serviced in 2017 and I verified it still works - tx freq might need adjusted a bit but they can take care of that at the transponder cert.

I'd love to see a pic of where your gdl 82 is mounted, the belly sounds like a reasonable idea. That would roughly be in line with the existing coax run. 

[Echo]

10 hours ago, Elijah said:

I actually came across a gdl 82 for a good deal so that is the ADSB route I'm going. My transponder was serviced in 2017 and I verified it still works - tx freq might need adjusted a bit but they can take care of that at the transponder cert.

I'd love to see a pic of where your gdl 82 is mounted, the belly sounds like a reasonable idea. That would roughly be in line with the existing coax run. 

I will try and get a pic when in annual in April.  

[A64Pilot]

A KT-76C can usually be had for not much money at all, they look a lot better being digital and match the radios if yiu have King radios, plus it displays the pressure altitude your xponder is transmitting. Besides there is no modification required, they slide into the existing tray and everything works.

[Elijah]

Got the interior out, starting on the window removal as well as some antenna work. Around the baggage area and above the hat rack area, there was ~1" thick black foam that has completely disintegrated. What - if anything - do people put in there in place of it, I guess it's just for sound dampening? The rest of the airplane has ~1/2" thick mylar backed foam insulation cut to fit between the various tubes, I believe that was installed when SBM20-208B was performed years ago. That foam is all in good condition. 

[LANCECASPER]

8 minutes ago, Elijah said:

Got the interior out, starting on the window removal as well as some antenna work. Around the baggage area and above the hat rack area, there was ~1" thick black foam that has completely disintegrated. What - if anything - do people put in there in place of it, I guess it's just for sound dampening? The rest of the airplane has ~1/2" thick mylar backed foam insulation cut to fit between the various tubes, I believe that was installed when SBM20-208B was performed years ago. That foam is all in good condition. 

Soundex works well.

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/soundex7.php?clickkey=23792

[Danb]

On 2/11/2024 at 12:21 AM, Elijah said:

The flap corners were also skinned up so I made replacements. Same for the inboard flap hinges. One side only the fairing was damaged, on the other side both the fairing and the arm needed replaced. I ordered them from Mooney through LASAR, however the pilot holes do not line up well at all with the mating parts. I learned you need to ask for no pilot holes, undrilled if you're planning on matching it to an existing part. 

I’m unbelievably jealous of the skill and knowledge you possess 

D

[hammdo]

My GDL82 is above the co-pilot pedals:

[Elijah]

7 hours ago, LANCECASPER said:

Soundex works well.

https://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalog/appages/soundex7.php?clickkey=23792

Thanks! 

5 hours ago, Danb said:

I’m unbelievably jealous of the skill and knowledge you possess 

D

Thank you, I'm figuring out a lot of this as I go, with the help of good mentors! 

5 hours ago, hammdo said:

My GDL82 is above the co-pilot pedals:

 

Interesting idea, it doesn't get kicked there too much? I am planning to put it under the floor on the passenger side at this point, I have everything apart anyway... 

[hammdo]

No issues so far!

-Don

[Elijah]

Haven't posted for awhile but the project has continued on and the end is in sight! At least the end of what I will call "phase 1", that is getting her airworthy again. Work has been focused on a few different areas: Finding & patching leaks in the left fuel tank, removing the old windows, and avionics. And all kinds of little stuff like replacing SCAT tubing, replacing/installing antennas, etc. 

I used Don Maxwell's shop vac and soap method to find the leaks and it worked very well. Stripped the old sealant down to metal around each leak, applied CS3204 and, once cured, CS3600 on top of that. Then re-checked for leaks and it looks good. We'll see how long it lasts, fingers crossed it will last awhile! I thought it's worth trying a simple fix before going all out with a complete strip and seal. 

I removed all the windows and windshield by slowly working a putty knife around each one to slice the old sealant. Then polygone, heat, and elbow grease to remove the remaining sealant from the aluminum in preparation for the new windows. 

I decided to mount the GDL82 under the passenger floorboards. I put the warning light and anonymous switch on a panel over the hole where the old Loran used to be. It's powered off of the existing transponder breaker. 

Since the windshield was out and I thought of how much easier it would be to do it now, I decided to replace one of the kx170 radios with a garmin 430. Got a deal on a non-waas version together with a KI209A indicator and spent the last couple weeks of evenings getting it wired up. There are a lot of connections on one of these babies, I know why avionics shops charge what they do for an install of something like this! I'm happy to report that is is working, at least the extent I can test it tucked back inside the hangar - only acquiring one or two satellites under a metal roof. 

And yes I left the ADF, the tubular structure behind the panel would not have allowed putting the 430 in that slot and I figured it will be fun to play with vs just a blanking plate there. Someday in phase 2 or 3, there will be a panel refresh but this will suit us for now and I think it's good bang for the buck. 

I have new windows in hand from great lakes aero. Once those are installed, the interior will go back in and she should be about ready to go! 

[LANCECASPER]

45 minutes ago, Elijah said:

Haven't posted for awhile but the project has continued on and the end is in sight! At least the end of what I will call "phase 1", that is getting her airworthy again. Work has been focused on a few different areas: Finding & patching leaks in the left fuel tank, removing the old windows, and avionics. And all kinds of little stuff like replacing SCAT tubing, replacing/installing antennas, etc. 

I used Don Maxwell's shop vac and soap method to find the leaks and it worked very well. Stripped the old sealant down to metal around each leak, applied CS3204 and, once cured, CS3600 on top of that. Then re-checked for leaks and it looks good. We'll see how long it lasts, fingers crossed it will last awhile! I thought it's worth trying a simple fix before going all out with a complete strip and seal. 

I removed all the windows and windshield by slowly working a putty knife around each one to slice the old sealant. Then polygone, heat, and elbow grease to remove the remaining sealant from the aluminum in preparation for the new windows. 

I decided to mount the GDL82 under the passenger floorboards. I put the warning light and anonymous switch on a panel over the hole where the old Loran used to be. It's powered off of the existing transponder breaker. 

Since the windshield was out and I thought of how much easier it would be to do it now, I decided to replace one of the kx170 radios with a garmin 430. Got a deal on a non-waas version together with a KI209A indicator and spent the last couple weeks of evenings getting it wired up. There are a lot of connections on one of these babies, I know why avionics shops charge what they do for an install of something like this! I'm happy to report that is is working, at least the extent I can test it tucked back inside the hangar - only acquiring one or two satellites under a metal roof. 

And yes I left the ADF, the tubular structure behind the panel would not have allowed putting the 430 in that slot and I figured it will be fun to play with vs just a blanking plate there. Someday in phase 2 or 3, there will be a panel refresh but this will suit us for now and I think it's good bang for the buck. 

I have new windows in hand from great lakes aero. Once those are installed, the interior will go back in and she should be about ready to go! 

Nice job - I enjoy watching your progress!

 

For $35 you can make your KX170 look almost like new: https://www.engravers.net/kx170b.html

I've ordered stuff from this guy and they do a great job.

[EricJ]

Nice!   Good progress!

Another advantage of the 430 install is that you can slide-in an IFD440 if/when you want to do that.

[Elijah]

1 hour ago, LANCECASPER said:

Nice job - I enjoy watching your progress!

 

For $35 you can make your KX170 look almost like new: https://www.engravers.net/kx170b.html

I've ordered stuff from this guy and they do a great job.

That's a great idea, thanks! I need to post progress on here more often to get all you guys good ideas lol. 

I actually have a couple spare 170s, I should see if any of them look better. One reason why I kept the 170, spares are cheap or free. 

[LANCECASPER]

Just now, Elijah said:

I actually have a couple spare 170s, I should see if any of them look better. One reason why I kept the 170, spares are cheap or free. 

Plus they sound great and are extremely durable. They have been around for decades and will be around for decades into the future.

[Elijah]

Finished running the new scat tubing tonight (minus two hose clamps). The old stuff had completely disintegrated.