182s Prebuy

David Augspurger

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IIn the process of puchasing a 182s 1997. Is there any items I need to insist be checked?
The aircraft is 20smoh 30spoh. It has keith AC in it. Reasonbly low time. It has has an outboard leading edge replaced and a minor firewall repair. Does this aircraft have rubber hoses at the wing roots? What about the brake hoses? It is 20 years old.

Thanks
David Augspurger
 
IIn the process of puchasing a 182s 1997. Is there any items I need to insist be checked?
The aircraft is 20smoh 30spoh. It has keith AC in it. Reasonbly low time. It has has an outboard leading edge replaced and a minor firewall repair. Does this aircraft have rubber hoses at the wing roots? What about the brake hoses? It is 20 years old.

Thanks
David Augspurger


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182 + minor firewall repair...

Not saying anything good or bad, just sayin’
 
I’m just assuming here

Which you know what they say about assuming

Sometimes you’re right

But the 182 being nose heavy has had some inexperienced or unprepared 182 pilots slightly buckle or damage the firewall as a result of its nose heaviness on landing, and I’d almost bet that was what happened, so I’d take that into consideration if that was the cause, as to how the plane was treated/flown otherwise.
 
I’m just assuming here

Which you know what they say about assuming

Sometimes you’re right

But the 182 being nose heavy has had some inexperienced or unprepared 182 pilots slightly buckle or damage the firewall as a result of its nose heaviness on landing, and I’d almost bet that was what happened, so I’d take that into consideration if that was the cause, as to how the plane was treated/flown otherwise.
I’m not in disagreement, just thinking that particular repair requires inspection in some detail to determine degree and other possible damage.

And addressing OP concern on hoses. The old hoses have a book life of 8 years. Some newer hoses can have longer life which translates to “on condition”.
 
I’m not in disagreement, just thinking that particular repair requires inspection in some detail to determine degree and other possible damage.
.

I absolutely agree, might be a good opportunity for some bargaining too, but If i was buying it especially knowing it had a repair there id probably want my own mechanic to go through the plane
 
Pick up a copy of the Cessna 182 Buyer's Guide.
 
Why the small difference in SMOH and SPOH? Was the top end re-done right after break in? Or this kind of typical engine log numbers for a full rebuild of the motor.
 
Pick up a copy of the Cessna 182 Buyer's Guide.

I think that publication does not include the "restart" 182s (only 1956 through 1986 models)? There may have been an update or different guide?
 
Most 182s manufactured more than 30 minutes ago either have a firewall repair, or need a firewall repair. This might be a slight exaggeration, of course. Anyway, dropping the nose hard is pretty common in 182s. Hence the firewall issues.
 
Why the small difference in SMOH and SPOH? Was the top end re-done right after break in? Or this kind of typical engine log numbers for a full rebuild of the motor.

I think that means the prop was overhauled first and then 10 hours later the engine was overhauled.

Was there a prop strike related to firewall and wing damage (and engine/crank inspection) then 10 hrs later a full engine overhaul (maybe associated with prop strike or reassembly issue). Total worthless internet guess; OP would need to elaborate or share log files.
 
I think that means the prop was overhauled first and then 10 hours later the engine was overhauled.

Was there a prop strike related to firewall and wing damage (and engine/crank inspection) then 10 hrs later a full engine overhaul (maybe associated with prop strike or reassembly issue). Total worthless internet guess; OP would need to elaborate or share log files.
My bad, I thought SPOH meant partial overhaul - forgot about Prop Overhaul. Actually, there is probably some other jargon for Top End overhaul now that I think of it. I wouldn't mind having a 20yr old 182 with only 30hrs on the prop and 20hrs on the motor - provided no other stuff wrong.
 
...I wouldn't mind having a 20yr old 182 with only 30hrs on the prop and 20hrs on the motor - provided no other stuff wrong.

Which of us wouldn't? :D

But a 20 year old airplane of any kind is about as likely to have "no other stuff wrong" as Santa coming down the chimney next month... :)
 
My bad, I thought SPOH meant partial overhaul - forgot about Prop Overhaul. Actually, there is probably some other jargon for Top End overhaul now that I think of it. I wouldn't mind having a 20yr old 182 with only 30hrs on the prop and 20hrs on the motor - provided no other stuff wrong.

I've seen the acronym STOH once in a while.
 
Are the restarted 182's all fuel injected? If not, expect to blow $$$$ on mags when changing ownership. I know on the older 182's there is a cast part right around where the front strut goes up into the engine compartment. My pre-buy mechanic looked very carefully for firewall damage and that cast part being cracked ($$$$).
 
Whoa wait, didn't you just buy a PA32 w/ tundra tires that everyone wanted see a pic of?
 
I’m just assuming here

Which you know what they say about assuming

Sometimes you’re right

But the 182 being nose heavy has had some inexperienced or unprepared 182 pilots slightly buckle or damage the firewall as a result of its nose heaviness on landing, and I’d almost bet that was what happened, so I’d take that into consideration if that was the cause, as to how the plane was treated/flown otherwise.

It’s not nose heavy if you’re not an idiot. Seriously.

Do you know how hard that nose has to hit to cause that damage? It’s hard. Real hard. It isn’t from being “nose heavy”, it’s from completely hamfisted pilots who can’t fly an airspeed.

I guess if you call “unable to fly an airspeed”, “inexperienced or unprepared” ...

There’s at least two people on this board doing their primary training in their own 182s, and neither has managed to buckle a firewall, even with typical student pilot landings, right?

They’ll probably wear out a set of tires, but firewall bending? Quite unlikely if their instructor has more than three brain cells to rub together and the students have at least two.

You know what really hurts 182 firewalls?

LANDING on the nose gear because you’re flying too fast. Nose down. Driving the nose into the pavement.

It’s not from banging the nose down after touchdown because the airplane is “nose heavy”, which is the impression most people get from the whole nose heavy thing.

If you fly the nosegear into the ground because you can’t be bothered to slow up and flare, and hit it so hard it pivots and wrinkles the firewall, you probably missed a prop strike by only an inch or so also.

And yet. You know what you’ll hear from 182 and other pilots constantly?

“I add ten to fifteen knots when it’s gusty. And I don’t like landing full flaps. It feels like I have less control”

Yep. And you drive your nosewheel into the ground too, I bet.

Most 182s manufactured more than 30 minutes ago either have a firewall repair, or need a firewall repair. This might be a slight exaggeration, of course. Anyway, dropping the nose hard is pretty common in 182s. Hence the firewall issues.

No.

Ours doesn’t, and none of the rentals in the area, nor the entire COWG CAP fleet did, at any time over nearly two decades. At least when I was still a member.

Maybe you were kidding. Don’t know.
 
There' almost some irony to the 182 nose heavy, firewall issue. Being one of the "newbies" I am so worried about it after everything I have read that I am more likely to flare a bit high and wind up dropping it on the mains a little hard, not intentional. I still to this day can't even feel the nose wheel touching down, its weird. I think I am so concentrated on the flare and setting the mains down nicely that I haven't reached that level where I get a sense of the nose wheel coming down. I will say that my first instructor taught me to land with full flaps (40deg) and power off to stall. With several hundred landings now, I think I have 5 with less than 40deg flaps...those were practicing no flap landings. I know as I get better at higher cross winds I will have to back that off some, but otherwise the old skylane seems to land pretty nice with full flaps and slower. I would think that combo right there would really diminish the firewall damage cases.
 
Do you know how hard that nose has to hit to cause that damage? It’s hard. Real hard. It isn’t from being “nose heavy”, it’s from completely hamfisted pilots who can’t fly an airspeed.

Thank you. I don't have a lot of hours in the 182, about 50-60, and I got my instrument rating in it, and I never had a problem landing a plane. Like you said, just manage the airspeed on landing. What's so hard about that?

Many years ago when I lived in Pensacola, I would rent a 172 180hp from an airport in Milton FL. I few it to an airport north of Milton and when I was landing, I'm not sure what I did but I think I flared too high and stalled the airplane to high and it dropped in like a rock, and being stalled probably landed on the nose wheel first. It was very hard. So I fly the plan back to Milton, landing is fine. I didn't think anything else about it.

I leave and come back a week or so later and I see they're working on the 172. I asked what was wrong and they said 'they're repairing the firewall. It was bent.' Now I'm not totally sure it was me, but it definitely could have been. :)
 
It’s not nose heavy if you’re not an idiot. Seriously.

Do you know how hard that nose has to hit to cause that damage? It’s hard. Real hard. It isn’t from being “nose heavy”, it’s from completely hamfisted pilots who can’t fly an airspeed.

I guess if you call “unable to fly an airspeed”, “inexperienced or unprepared” ...

There’s at least two people on this board doing their primary training in their own 182s, and neither has managed to buckle a firewall, even with typical student pilot landings, right?

They’ll probably wear out a set of tires, but firewall bending? Quite unlikely if their instructor has more than three brain cells to rub together and the students have at least two.

You know what really hurts 182 firewalls?

LANDING on the nose gear because you’re flying too fast. Nose down. Driving the nose into the pavement.

It’s not from banging the nose down after touchdown because the airplane is “nose heavy”, which is the impression most people get from the whole nose heavy thing.

If you fly the nosegear into the ground because you can’t be bothered to slow up and flare, and hit it so hard it pivots and wrinkles the firewall, you probably missed a prop strike by only an inch or so also.

And yet. You know what you’ll hear from 182 and other pilots constantly?

“I add ten to fifteen knots when it’s gusty. And I don’t like landing full flaps. It feels like I have less control”

Yep. And you drive your nosewheel into the ground too, I bet.



No.

Ours doesn’t, and none of the rentals in the area, nor the entire COWG CAP fleet did, at any time over nearly two decades. At least when I was still a member.

Maybe you were kidding. Don’t know.
I gotta disagree - I never bent one, but it is not/not an uncommon event for a 182 to have a pranged firewall; sure, the pilot has to mess up, but the airplane does have a proclivity for that kind of damage to occur when a pilot gets behind. And it doesn't take an "idiot" level IQ to make it happen; just some lack of proficiency, maybe too high a sink rate, etc. The airplane handles like a truck, and the control harmony sucks - it has its good points, for sure - but one of the compromises in the design leaves it prone to firewall damage.

It happened twice with 182s in CAP in Maryland, as I recall; one was basically a controlled crash - check pilot let the left seater get a little too far behind. The other wasn't noticed until an annual. I don't inspect the firewalls on the local rental fleet, so I can't know about those.
 
I gotta disagree - I never bent one, but it is not/not an uncommon event for a 182 to have a pranged firewall; sure, the pilot has to mess up, but the airplane does have a proclivity for that kind of damage to occur when a pilot gets behind. And it doesn't take an "idiot" level IQ to make it happen; just some lack of proficiency, maybe too high a sink rate, etc. The airplane handles like a truck, and the control harmony sucks - it has its good points, for sure - but one of the compromises in the design leaves it prone to firewall damage.

It happened twice with 182s in CAP in Maryland, as I recall; one was basically a controlled crash - check pilot let the left seater get a little too far behind. The other wasn't noticed until an annual. I don't inspect the firewalls on the local rental fleet, so I can't know about those.

Every one I’ve seen, and I’m more than happy to see one that wasn’t this, was like you said, a “controlled crash” where the nose gear hit first.

In any sort of flare at all even if the nose gear comes slapping down hard, the piston is going to take up most of that force after the very rugged mains have already hit hard and taken a bunch of it also.

The wrinkling is usually a deformity that looks like the nose gear was trying to be pried away from the firewall by its own leverage and worse at the top than bottom. The firewall acts like a hinge of sorts at the bottom and the top of the strut tries to pull away at the top.

I suppose you could get such a HUGE sink rate that the strut would show deformity more in line with a straight up and down slam, but it’s a lot harder to do. That sink rate would be VERY high.

I know my note may have been a but hyperbolic but my point I was trying to stress strongly is that USUALLY if you at least flare at all or don’t do something like overflare and start a stall a number of feet in the air, allowing the nose to drop rapidly so it hits first, the 182 firewall isn’t exactly weak like fragile china or something. It’s the driving the nosegear into the ground first that usually gets it.

As far as control harmony and all that goes, the yoke can be “heavy” if the aircraft isn’t trimmed, and as airspeed slows the 182 needs BIG control movements as the controls become less and less effective, which is the common mistake new pilots make in a 182. They’re used to flying a Skyhawk and while they’re not exactly fighter jets either, they don’t realize the controls need bigger and further movement as the airflow goes away in a 182.

The controls and their feel are very “honest” and not really heavy in aileron, but that big yoke and need to whip that thing a long way when at low air speeds as you touch down if you encounter a gust, or change in crosswind, etc... tends to catch new 182 pilots by surprise. It needs a lot of input just a couple seconds after it needs very little input... you’re gingerly flaring and if the bottom falls out due to a wind shift or crosswind, it takes a whole bunch of control movement right NOW to stop the unwanted directional or pitch change.

Best way to get the feel for how ineffective the elevator becomes is to try to make a landing and purposefully hold the nose gear off. It can be done, but you have to give a pretty good tug at mains touchdown to pull it off. The mass of the O-470 wants to keep rotating the nose downward after the mains touch when the CG is forward, and it’s almost always forward.

Locally the CAP planes have a mandatory survival kit in the tail baggage area for mountain work and it helps a lot with making sure the mains contact first. Sucks for useful load on those T182Ts with as heavy as they are compared to mine, though. They can’t fill the tanks and fly a full three person crew most of the time, depending on size of said crew members.

At least they have the turbo to help out... most of their flying is much nearer to max gross including the 3100 lb MGTOW that I don’t have. Mine tops out at 2950 and I struggle to get it there unless it’s packed to the gills with stuff or people. There’s an STC for the later models like mine to have the 3100 lb MGTOW and a max landing weight of 2950, but we analyzed our typical missions and the main purpose of such an STC would be to stuff our long range tanks full, and have better reserves on an IFR XC into weather that requires an alternate, which isn’t a common mission for us. For the T182T, the 3100 is needed just to handle the weight of the nicer interior, G1000 and associated boxes, and the wing tank redesign away from bladder tanks. It’s a heavy truck.

The older 182s are a lot lighter and I think, less prone to the “smack the runway with the nose gear” events.

The airplane doesn’t quite have the glass jaw that many people think it does. It just has a lot of pilots that transition from 150/152/172 that don’t quite need the quick large control movements at landing speed and slower.

This is also demonstrated really well in falling leaf practice or real slow flight at MCA. The elevator and ailerons get downright sloppy that slow. It’s just hard for people to apply what they know about that to the landing phase of flight, I think.
 
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