Well, thank you for a mechanic's perspective on this.

Seeing as every piece of "how to buy a used airplane" literature recommends
a mechanic's pre-buy, what do consider a real-world way for the amatuer to
avoid the big money pits like wing spar problems?


"RST Engineering" wrote in message
...
Quite a few mechanics and quite a few shops tend to shy away from the
"pre-buy" inspection for one main reason. There are a gazillion items
that
can be inspected to a fare-thee-well and wind up being unairworthy next
week. Then you come back to me and ask me why I didn't find this glaring
problem on the pre-buy and expect me to fix it for free.

I won't take a pre-buy job except for a good friend and even at that we
have
to have the understanding that (s)he is going to be standing right at my
side during the entire process and watch everything that I look at. Six
months later when the veeblefeltzer snaps a rittit both (s)he and I looked
at the damned thing and agreed that it looked normal. That and I charge
double for a prebuy what I charge for an annual.