Any Aztec owners/flyers in the group?

"Jim Burns" writes:

Ok, let's start with average annual maintenance and insurance costs,
unforeseen "gotchyas" that ended up costing more than 10% of the purchase
price to fix, hydraulic power pack failures or rebuilds, cost of heater
rebuilds, cost of flap torque tube inspection or replacement, cost of
hydraulic hose replacement due to AD.

I replaced my heater with one of the new ceramic core electronic
thermometer versions a couple years ago. It still doesn't work.
Hose replacement has been ongoing during our restoration.

I've overhauled the power pack but that was awhile ago. I also
had the torque tubes replaced (with steel) a couple years ago when
it was a service bulletin. I looked for the bill but haven't found
it. It was part of a bunch of other upgrades and repairs so I don't
recall the cost.

Considering that I paid "only" $25K for my C model (as "scrap"), yes,
most of these things cost more than 10% of the purchase price. I'll
look for some bills but mostly I try to forget them!

A lot of those things I can get estimates from shops on, but I'm looking for
some real world experiences such as "We had our Aztec in the shop to have
the torque tube inspected and they found this or that and we about died at
the cost of having it repaired."

Learning that our props and hubs were worthless was quite a setback.
Any *decent* inspection should uncover that though.

A C model shouldn't have corrosion thanks to the zinc chromate. I'm
not thinking of any single things that should be real killers.

--kyler