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My wife and I were taking our first big trip in the airplane. We were flying from Illinois back home, but the last quarter of the trip had dodgy weather, so we stopped to check the weather in Lexington. The weather was still dodgy, so we stayed the night and got ready to leave the next morning. And when I went to do the run-up check, the right magneto was dead. Poopy (and other four-letter words).
So...we rented a car and drove home, and then I went up the next week
so that I could talk to the mechanic. It took a couple of days to get
scheduled. Here's a look down inside the engine at the back of the
magneto:
The black thing on the right is the magneto. The lead going to it is
the shielded wire that comes from the ignition switch. It looks to me
like it's almost twisted off, but apparently it's fine. You can see
hte bracket in the center of the picture that in a Mooney makes it
hard to get the magneto out easily. The bracket holds the propellor
speed governor in place; that's the thing sort of to the left.
They looked at it and did a bunch of diagnostics Tuesday and
yesterday. It turns out that the magneto cable is fine, the magneto
itself failed, so they're sending it off for overhaul. So the plane
is sitting in tiedown at Lexington. :-(
Waiting for the mechanic to fix it happens to every airplane owner; I was just hoping it would be later rather than sooner.