I think we all know how this is going at this point! More progress and more frustration. The good news is that we are only dealing with issues that we already had, not new ones. But it’s time to finally finish this Whack-A-Mole maintenance!
We knew we had an engine that got rough. After all the ignition issues we had with the P-Leads we turned back to ignition even though trouble shooting initially ruled it out. We found a spark plug wire that was “intermittent” so that became a leading suspect although on weak evidence. However, after all this work it didn’t seem smart to keep an obviously OLD harness. So we bought a new set of harnesses. They only came in RED. So we now have red ignition harnesses and I like them! 
Once we got the harness we wanted to get them on the right engine to test and see if it fixed our issue. Then we found out my new harness was made for -40E spark plugs and I had -38E. So of course I upgraded to -40 as they are a bit more robust. Once installed I test flew the plane. It runs great! Except when airborne and at low power settings (about 20 inches of manifold or less). Now that we have “isolated” the roughness we think it is related to the intake manifold or carburetor.
But, the right prop had been slow to feather on run up. So are pulling off the prop governor to get sent off and repaired. While it is out we will chase down the manifold leak problem. We are still working on the CHT issue with the GEM and we *think* it will require a new gauge. So hopefully that too will get resolved. The final piece is the flap gauge and that requires a little attention to repair it and put it back in. I have just been eyeballing the flaps but it should be fixed too. Oh, and service the hydraulic filter.
So that’s the “final” list I HOPE!
While doing my “test flight” I wanted to see how fast I could push Annie. So at 5,500 ft and 23 x 2500 I got an average of 167 mph. For some reason I seem to always post the “slow” leg so this time I made sure to capture the fast speed. So here’s evidence that it isn’t just Mooneys that are fast at 201 mph! Of course I had to have a 35 mph tailwind to get that ground speed! The speed was rising and dropping and at one point I had 206 mph showing but it also dropped to 196. The North South legs were right at 167 mph each so I’m pretty confident of that speed.
In truth I was at a higher than typical cruise power setting to get that speed, about 79%. So I would not normally use such a high (and thirsty!) power setting. More typical for me is about 65% and 135 kts but at least now I have proof I can do 145 KTAS if needed.
