Just spoke to Stan yesterday as he'd found some old 680V manuals when he was clearing out the hangar that he wanted to send to me.
But that wasn't the interesting part.
He'd taken his bird to Brian at Arkansas Turbine to figure out a problem he'd had with his power gauges. In any case, Brian had done a full Lebeau (sp?) test run and found out that they'd put the wrong NTS sensor on it as well as some sort of early temp sensor that was not kosher, making him run it in reality well below max temp. And like magic, he'd picked up another 120hp aside! That's huge! He used to cruise along at 240-245kts and now his 681 does 260kts all day long. Very cool.
Inspired by this I called Brian myself today and we've agree that when the time is right (i.e. the circumference of my wallet), I'll bring my bird to him and hope he can find another few horses in mine as well!
Hope springs eternal!
But in all seriousness, if you can get 260kts out of a 681, that's not a far cry from a -5 powered ship. Actually makes them pretty competitive. Morris always said the 681 was the best airplane suited for the private owner, as it combined performance with low cost. I'm thinking maybe he wasn't wrong. At least not about that.