This is of course true for a factory built plane as well.A pre-buy cannot possibly find every problem that a builder may have induced.
And that's why I won't build one myself. I know that I don't have the aptitude for it. Some say that you should always plan to build two airplanes when starting out; one to learn on, the other to fly in. Guess what happens to the ones built to learn on?Yes, but there is a LOT of FAA nonsense that goes on to make sure that factory airplanes are built to a specific (certified) design and that they're all the same. While nothing can be perfect, it gives me a lot more confidence than some random builder. While I know that some random builder can also make a much BETTER airplane than Cessna, I'm not going to know whether it's a diamond or a lemon.
A pre-buy cannot possibly find every problem that a builder may have induced.
Yes, but there is a LOT of FAA nonsense that goes on to make sure that factory airplanes are built to a specific (certified) design and that they're all the same. While nothing can be perfect, it gives me a lot more confidence than some random builder. While I know that some random builder can also make a much BETTER airplane than Cessna, I'm not going to know whether it's a diamond or a lemon.
Well, my original response was a little tongue in cheek, but not too much so. I go to OSH annually, and I've seen some wonderful workmanship. I did not make blanket statements about experimentl aircraft. Go back and read what I wrote. My point is that you can't honestly claim they're all wonderful. Of some all you can say is "yeah, it passed the inspection." Doesn't mean it passed by a lot. Just because it's experimental doesn't mean that it's automatically on one end of the spectrum or the other.
I'm not making blanket statements like that about experimental planes. Why are you so adamantly against certificated planes? How about the Cessna, née Columbia, née Lancair Certificated?
I'd take buying a homebuilt the same way I'd take buying a Heathkit. (For the youngsters around here, they offered a pretty complete line of electronic equipment, from test gear to ham radio to televisions. I built all or part of three GR2001 TVs while I was a teenager.) Give it a good, thorough inspection, know how they should be built so you can tell whether the solder joints are nice and pretty or cold and globby, twist all of the knobs to make sure they're smooth, fire it up and take it through its paces, make sure you get all of the books, and then if it passes, buy with confidence. The same would go for a homebuilt airplane, though I'd get help for the inspection because I don't know what to look for there. I'd also be very leery of composite aircraft because you cannot know whether they were built competently without basically cutting them apart.
Hey. Not everyone can build, or has the confidence to buy a homebuilt. There are also, sad to say, truly crappily built homebuilts out there.
My understanding is that the sealer peeled off in a long, thin strip and passed through the fuel lines until it hit the first obstruction. Then it "piled up" until it closed off the line. I'm not familiar with the fuel system on an RV, but I would expect them to have something like a finger strainer near the tank itself. Don't know if the sealer got past it somehow, or if the builder had left it off. If the latter...well, do people drain fuel tanks and extract the finger strainers on a typical pre-buy inspection? If not, a pre-buy wouldn't have caught the lack.
I am the fourth owner of the airplane and, it's the original builder who did the non-logged repair. So I doubt I could recover anything from him. As far as the FAA is concerned, they could probably suspend the guy's A&P license if he had one, but I suspect all he had was the Repairman Certificate on the airplane itself.
