Mooney Fuel Vent Cover and Storage Board for FV and Pitot Heat Cover by tuercke_c

Last crawled date: 3 years, 4 months ago

I am using this fuel vent cover along with a little storage board in my Mooney Ovation 2GX. The fuel vent cover should work for all newer models, to the best of my believe J-model and upward are using the same fuel tank breather pipes.
The fuel vent cover is printed using flex TPU material, the storage board is done in PLA / PETG.
I use the FV cover to close off the breather pipe durning ground times of the airplane. This is to prevent dirt daubers or parasitic wasps to build nests inside of the pipe, possibly blocking the airflow to the wing tank.
The cover has a small hole in it (2.0 mm, about 1/16 "). The hole should be small enough to prevent critters to enter the fuel system but still allow some air passing through.
I have made a little board to store the fuel vent covers along with the pitot heat cover. I have just glued this board to the baggage compartment wall using some double sided tape.
The board can easily be seen during pre-flight and I always place both fuel vent caps and the pitot heat cover on the board. For once, it is safely stored during flight and second I can just turn my head and see if I have actually removed and stored all the covers in the back of the plane.
I have added an additional line both to my outside checklist and the regular pre-flight checklist.
WARNING: If you use these fuel vent caps, please make sure to always remove them before flight. Connect a "Remove before flight" tag to the cap. Adding an item to the checklists seems to be a good measure - look in the back of the plane before starting the engine and check if all covers are placed on the storage board.
Even though there is a small hole in the fuel vent cap, this opening is not large enough in order to ensure proper breathing of your wing tank during flight. The engine may stall due to being deprived of fuel if the breather pipe is covered!
Throttle on and please fly safely!