Hello,

I'm looking to talk with someone who's owned a Turbo Lance for their
opinions on ownership and maintenance.

Thanks.


I used to fly one for a small company. It's a good airplane overall, lots
of room and payload. When this company was looking for an airplane, they
asked me to research the Turbo Lance II, specifically a 1979 they were
looking at and eventually purchased. I discovered from an analysis of
accidents in the NTSB database that this model has had a number of smoke in
the cockpit and/or fire in the engine compartment events due to the
turbocharger. IIRC, one of the events occurred even though an AD
specifically designed to stop this kind of thing was incorrectly done, and
some of the fault was laid on the AD itself for being difficult and
confusing.

While I've since lost the data, somebody posted a question about this make /
model in this newsgroup or R.A.P a few years ago and I responded to it (not
under this username) by posting my summary of what I learned about the
plane. You can probably find it in google / dejanews.

Engine temp control is important and you ought to have an all cylinder
engine monitor on it like a JPI. Get the cowling mod because it provides a
little speed increase and more importantly improves cylinder cooling.