You might give the wheel assembly a look. Sudden, one-way travel on the trim happened to me one time. Slight spalling on one of the stop catches (spring loaded ball/detents). I mean very, very slight and it prevented the wheel from moving one way. Quick smoothing of the ball...back in action, never to have happened again.

Can you trim full nose down and take the upper and lower tail side covers off?

The actuators should be visible. Then lift the boots to take a look.
You can reach the actuator top bolts and disconnect with the horizontal tail held up with some foam blocks. It will give you a bit more room. Creative use of extensions and universal sockets.

Check the bushings that go across the fittings where the mounting bolts are. They are drilled a bit off center to allow for differences during installation. Maybe seized on the bolts?

once disconnected you can turn the actuators by hand but count the turns to not lose the current rigging.

Tom,

I spoke with Sarah this afternoon. She test flew her whole new setup today for the first time. She reported the takeoff/climb and cruise performance to be spectacular but her prior set up was an O470 with a Mac two blade. Now she has a Pponk/Composite Voyager - so difficult to know what gave her the biggest bang for the buck. Likely the 470-50 engine. I will fly it with her in the next few weeks and make a side by side comparison with my 78 inch Hartzell/TS O520 UTS.. Everyone is interested in the performance gains of the Voyager - especially the composite. I plan to be very scientific about it and likely post some scientific comparisons once it is on my airplane - takeoff roll, time to climb to 10000 feet and cruise speeds using 4 way speed courses. I will put it up on my Youtube Channel. I don't plan on pulling the trigger for several months on the Voyager. Got stop spending so much money on airplanes - .

I should be at 3U2 for the Johnson Creek Skywagon Flyin. Would love to meet all of the Skywagon BTers out there. It's a short flight for me.

Thank you, Josh.
I look forward to your reports.
I have never met your friend with the new 470-50 conversion, but I am sure that she will be delighted.
Best,

Tom

Passing along a lesson learned from my 185. My fuel sensors showed 42 gallons in the left wing and 0 gallons in the right wing while in flight

My fuel computer showed 35 gallons when i landed. The fuel gauges showed 15 gallons
in left tank and 0 in the right which was confirmed by my measuring tube.

What happened?

leaked out somehow

Monarch caps?


By the way, rubber o rings from monarch are outrageous.
There is an auto zone equivalent at negligible cost.

NAPA
National Aviation Parts Association

forgot to put the left cap on and the sensor floated up in flight while the fuel ran out. A 20 gallon loss is to much to leak out with the cap in place.

Andy

My monarch caps have left fuel contrails on a few occasions.
Post take-off checklist always involves looking behind the right and left wing for evidence of venting.

It is very obvious when you look back behind the flap. It is also visible by folks on the ground. you can lose a lot of fuel quickly.

left cap was dangling when i landed. i didn’t fuel it. my home base fbo did. i will take the blame. i have had this happen 4.times. Caught it three times.

This is very dangerous. The CiES system is amazingly accurate. The EIS totalizer is as well. Had nearly full tanks. Two hours later i had 15 gallons. i had no idea the a missing fuel cap could cause this issue. The fact that during flight had 0 fuel made me think the sensor was wrong. Ii didn’t detect and left rolling tendencies either.

i really talked myself into an indication error. But it wasn’t. It could have really had a bad outcome. I had a retired NFL player who lives on my lake aboard as well.

This picture is a pretty definitive indication that the left fuel cap has an issue.

How many knew that? seriously?

Mark
I did. Twice different partners in my 182 had a cap issue. Lost lots of fuel both times, cies gauges in plane for second event, original floats for first. Totalizer was wrong, gauges right both times.

We have two sources for truth, sucks when they disagree. Hereafter I will believe the more pessimistic one.

RAS

happened to me also

Precisely. I like the 3 areas of agreement for my plane
Totalizer. Most precise for usage but useless for venting etc
Gauges. Not very precise (no sensors) but will catch venting.
Sticking the tanks. Lets me know the other two are largely correct to begin with.

Knowing exactly what you have in the tanks allows you to avoid the “10 more gallons for comfort”!weight penalty for short field ops.

Will be looking at the sensors.

Friend has the cies sensors and gi 275 I believe? Tail wheel plane. How do you accommodate the low indication at rest and higher in flight attitude?

Seems prudent to do the 10 gallons just in case and then we have more on board than required