Beat up / worn out Arrow valuation

This may help:

We replaced the engine in our '79 Arrow IV (T-tail) a few months ago with a
Lyc. factory reman and overhauled the prop at the same time. The only
things we didn't relace firewall-forward were the exhaust and the
alternator, both of which were only a couple of years old. We now figure
the plane has a market value right around $90K. It has a very nice exterior
(maybe 8.5/10) and a not bad interior (solid 7/10). Very well equipped.
including backup electric AI, but no panel-mount GPS. VERY well maintained
by a top shop.

To turn your "dog" into a plane like ours, you would probably have to spend:

27K for a reman engine and prop o'haul (including installation)

15K for new paint and interior

maybe 10K to resolve other misc. problems. Add another $2K if the Piper
service bulletin on fuel hoses has not been done. This assumes no major
problems with the airframe, but does assume some needed work on the landing
gear (like main gear bushings).

The Garmin 430 probably adds $5K to the value, and maybe 3K premium for the
straight tail vs the T.

That works out to about $46K, based on the 90K starting point. So an asking
price of $50K is not wildly optimistic.

I'd guess that of the costs listed above, A&P labor probably amounts to
around $7K to $12K, so if you have the time and inclination, and if the
seller will take $45K, you might just have a good deal.

One final consideration: the lead time for reman and factory o'haul IO-360s
from Lycoming can get long. We had to wait many weeks for ours. You can
use that time to do the paint, interior, and other stuff (assuming the
needed services are available at the field where the plane is), but you are
likely to be grounded for a long time after the purchase.

--
-Elliott Drucker

I agree with Jay. My number is 400 hours. That seems about right to find
any assembly or break in errors. I would personally not want to be the
test pilot of a 0 time overhaul that someone else had done. Hell, I even
watched over our overhaul and I just replaced the THIRD cylinder (new
from now on - forget the overhauled cylinder crap, even if they are
"first run").

Good Luck,
Mike

Jay Honeck wrote:
I'd much rather buy a plane with a run-out engine and budget for an
immediate engine replacement/overhaul. That way at least you know what
you're getting.


Actually, from all the headaches I've read about here from owners who have
newly rebuilt or remanufactured engines, I think the best bet is a plane
with about 500 hours on it, all put on in the last 3 - 4 years.

Long enough for the owner to have worked out any bugs, and long enough to
have proven itself in the field.

I count myself lucky with our engine. (Rebuilt in 2002. No troubles --
knock on wood -- yet, after 500 hours...)

Chuck,

There is a myth about "project airplanes" that somehow the numbers will
work out. They rarely do. It almost never happens that the purchase
price is low enough to make it worthwhile. A neglected plane has all
sorts of "surprises" in store. Planes not only need repair, they need
constant upgrading and replacement of old "stuff" that may not have
broken yet. I'm sure the Arrow you are looking at has none of this done.

Also, getting an airplane in such poor condition back to flying snuff
usually take LOTS of time on the phone and LOTS of time needling
suppliers to get stuff fixed and LOTS of time going up blind alleys
locating parts. Are you guys trying to take on a 12-18 month project? Do
you want to fly or to get a risky education while fixing? If you want to
fly, get the money and buy a decent bird. 99 times out of 100 it will
cost way LESS than what you are contemplating.

There is really no way to make this work. Even at salvage value of about
$18k, once you add it up, it still makes little sense. $25 k for the
engine and firewall forward, $10k for the paint job, $6k for the
interior rehab. You are in the mid 50s. All you need is a bad call from
the prop shop to put you over budget compared to getting a ready-to-go
bird. Add in a couple of cracked landing gear components and you are
really under water. This all assumes the avionics are recent vintage and
working properly- bet they are not.

MAYBE it would work if one of you is an A&P with a place to work on it
AND you got it for free. This does not sound silly if you think about it
objectively. Would you buy a house under the terms proposed? Probably not.

I would not recommend going into this transaction. I would rather spend
the 12-18 months trying to find the right plane.

Good Luck,
Mike
Hi everyone,

I thought I'd throw this out for discussion and see what comes from
some of the experienced people on the list.

I'm helping out some at a local school. The owner of the school is a
REAL penny pincher. He scrimps and saves anywhere he can. He'd reuse
oil if he could (he already fights with the A&Ps about reusing old
spark plugs). But in the process, he's let his fleet go to hell --
and I mean REALLY to hell.

.stuff snipped about the plane

In the collector car world the wisdom is that it takes twice as much to make
a number 3 into a number 2 than the difference between them at purchase.
You can never (completely) restore low mileage into a high mileage vehicle.

The poster seems to be agreeing with some of what was suggested in the
earlier "used aircraft valuation" thread. I particularly note the opinion
that "MAYBE it would work if one of you is an A&P with a place to work on it
AND you got it for free."

The only guarantee seems to be that there WILL be maintenance costs and that
they will almost always be more numerous AND larger than we would hope.

Blue skies to all

"Mike Spera" wrote in message
ink.net...
Chuck,

There is a myth about "project airplanes" that somehow the numbers will
work out. They rarely do. It almost never happens that the purchase
price is low enough to make it worthwhile. A neglected plane has all
sorts of "surprises" in store. Planes not only need repair, they need
constant upgrading and replacement of old "stuff" that may not have
broken yet. I'm sure the Arrow you are looking at has none of this done.

Also, getting an airplane in such poor condition back to flying snuff
usually take LOTS of time on the phone and LOTS of time needling
suppliers to get stuff fixed and LOTS of time going up blind alleys
locating parts. Are you guys trying to take on a 12-18 month project? Do
you want to fly or to get a risky education while fixing? If you want to
fly, get the money and buy a decent bird. 99 times out of 100 it will
cost way LESS than what you are contemplating.

There is really no way to make this work. Even at salvage value of about
$18k, once you add it up, it still makes little sense. $25 k for the
engine and firewall forward, $10k for the paint job, $6k for the
interior rehab. You are in the mid 50s. All you need is a bad call from
the prop shop to put you over budget compared to getting a ready-to-go
bird. Add in a couple of cracked landing gear components and you are
really under water. This all assumes the avionics are recent vintage and
working properly- bet they are not.

MAYBE it would work if one of you is an A&P with a place to work on it
AND you got it for free. This does not sound silly if you think about it
objectively. Would you buy a house under the terms proposed? Probably not.

I would not recommend going into this transaction. I would rather spend
the 12-18 months trying to find the right plane.

Good Luck,
Mike
Hi everyone,

I thought I'd throw this out for discussion and see what comes from
some of the experienced people on the list.

I'm helping out some at a local school. The owner of the school is a
REAL penny pincher. He scrimps and saves anywhere he can. He'd reuse
oil if he could (he already fights with the A&Ps about reusing old
spark plugs). But in the process, he's let his fleet go to hell --
and I mean REALLY to hell.

.stuff snipped about the plane

It is an airplane shaped hole in the air you are going to fill with
money... Run screaming for the exit while you have the chance...

denny

Orval is correct on the miscellaneous parts that will need attention -
corroded wheel hups cause @250 per half, hydraulic actuators about the
same. There is a SB1006 on wing corrosion that requires that the tanks
be pulled (might as well do that anyway to replace the hoses as they
will be cracked by now). It's likely that Lycoming will insist that
the engine core be junked on rebuild.

VREF is 10-15% high. In pristine condition, I'd guess the plane might
be worth $80K, but people who pay to put aircraft in pristine condition
usually lose 50% of the cost of doing so. If you want a nice Arrow,
buy one in which someone has already invested that premium.

It NEVER pays to buy a project unless you can do virtually of the work
yourself, and even at the cost of the parts will just about equal the
gain in value.

ORVAL FAIRBAIRN wrote:

In article ,
"Dude" wrote:


"Steve Foley" wrote in message
...

Figure out what it would cost to pay to get it fixed, and what it would be
worth after the repairs. Subtract the repair cost from the final value -
that's what you should pay.

If you do the work yourself, you should pocket the savings, not the
current
owner.


That will get you the high end value.

Another thing to do is factor in risk. In this case, Chuck and his buddies
have less risk because they know the plane. However, the likely sales price
is what someone else, who doesn't know anything about the plane other than
what they can see or pay to find out, is likely to offer.

The second method will get a low end, where they should probably start their
negotiations.



If the operator has been cutting corners on maintenance, you could be
surprised at the kind of fleas hiding in that dog! I would expect worn
gear trunions, old hoses, leaky fuel bladders, corrosion, a prop that
needs expensive AD compliance, crazed glass -- just to name a few
starters.


That's what I was thinking, and why to me the value of the plane would
be $0.

The frustrating part of buying airplanes like this is that, yes, you
might be able to make it work out if you could buy it for $20K, but if
the seller hangs in there, eventually someone will pay too much for it.
Heck, he can do a $12K field overhaul and peddle it to another flight
school or to someone who doesn't want to pay more than $200 for a
pre-buy inspection.

What this owner should do is find a mid-time used engine from a junk
yard or such. Then he would have a non-runout cruddy rental airplane
at the right investment level.

It's hard to discount the price enough to reflect the major. And even
if
had a zero time engine all the sudden, it wouldn't be worth what you
think
cuz the airframe is barking. I second the poster who was worrried
about
gear parts--they are a problem on this airplane.

Betcha the prop needs some expensive parts too!!

Risk is pretty high even at zero investment.

Bill Hale

On 9-May-2005, "Paul kgyy" wrote:

VREF is 10-15% high. In pristine condition, I'd guess the plane might
be worth $80K


If you mean "otherwise pristine but with a run-out engine," then the $80K
figure is probably too high. But if you can find a very clean Arrow III
with the avionics described in this thread, including a Garmin 430, with a
zero time or near zero time engine for $80K I would be stunned. II think it
would sell very quickly for $10K more.

--
-Elliott Drucker