Before spending a lot of time and money traveling to see the airplane, why
not have an objective person located nearby have a look? What we did in
this case was arrange for a local mechanic (NOT the one doing regular
maintenance on the plane) spend about an hour looking for obvious problems.
This is NOT an adequate pre-buy, just an initial screening to keep you from
wasting time and money on obvious dogs. A good $60-80 investment.

I wonder what an A&P can actually tell in that amount of time. When I
was shopping for a Champ most A&Ps said they would need at least 5
hours before they know much of anything. My Mooney pre-buy cost be
$2500. I guess if there is something really obvious, this might help,
but otherwise, I'm not sure.

-Robert