Purchasing an airplane just for parts?

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George Chityat

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Has anyone done this or have any opinion on it?

A twin GA airplane that is due for an overhaul for the engines is being sold for about $50k.
It needs 2 overhauls, which would realistically cost about $80k. It has lots of nice avionics in it.
Garmin 530w, 430w, ASPEN, stratus ADSB, shalin engine monitor, etc... Also, the airframe is in good shape.
Assuming all log books in order, would it make financial sense to buy the airplane, and strip it for the parts I wanted, and sell the rest of the parts that I could, and whatever is left goes to the junk yard?
Assuming I have my own hangar, and a place to keep it. Just curious as to thoughts on something like this.
 
That sounds like a good deal. I am actually looking for a twin with good airframe and nice avionics with EOL engines and willing to OH them
 
Our FBO did that for their Aztec, I don't know the particulars but apparently it was cheaper and they've had people coming to them to buy parts.
 
I knew a guy that did that to get an engine and avionics for his experimental RV he was building. The airframe was damaged beyond economical repair, but it had a nice panel and low time engine.
 
George Chityat said:
Has anyone done this or have any opinion on it?

A twin GA airplane that is due for an overhaul for the engines is being sold for about $50k.
It needs 2 overhauls, which would realistically cost about $80k. It has lots of nice avionics in it.
Garmin 530w, 430w, ASPEN, stratus ADSB, shalin engine monitor, etc... Also, the airframe is in good shape.
Assuming all log books in order, would it make financial sense to buy the airplane, and strip it for the parts I wanted, and sell the rest of the parts that I could, and whatever is left goes to the junk yard?
Assuming I have my own hangar, and a place to keep it. Just curious as to thoughts on something like this.
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Based on your original post, I would question why strip a good airframe just because of engines? Are both engines totally runout and inoperable? Depending on the type of aircraft, it might make a good twin for someone who could afford the overhauls. Sounds well equipped.
 
George Chityat said:
Has anyone done this or have any opinion on it?

A twin GA airplane that is due for an overhaul for the engines is being sold for about $50k.
It needs 2 overhauls, which would realistically cost about $80k. It has lots of nice avionics in it.
Garmin 530w, 430w, ASPEN, stratus ADSB, shalin engine monitor, etc... Also, the airframe is in good shape.
Assuming all log books in order, would it make financial sense to buy the airplane, and strip it for the parts I wanted, and sell the rest of the parts that I could, and whatever is left goes to the junk yard?
Assuming I have my own hangar, and a place to keep it. Just curious as to thoughts on something like this.
Click to expand...
Go for it, it will require time on your part to list and sell the parts but you can get what you need. Most salvage yard pay what they can sell the instrument panel for the rest is gravy.
 
midwestpa24 said:
Based on your original post, I would question why strip a good airframe just because of engines? Are both engines totally runout and inoperable? Depending on the type of aircraft, it might make a good twin for someone who could afford the overhauls. Sounds well equipped.
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It might not YET need an overhaul, but both engines are well over TBO, and as a result the selling price is very low compared to the same model with time to go left before overhaul.
So one could buy it and pay for 2 overhauls, which might be a good deal. But on the other end it seems like a good deal to buy it for parts/avionics.
Obviously taking the whole thing apart, storage, etc cost time/money, but it could still be a good deal.

I am asking more as a general concept than this specific airplane.
 
George Chityat said:
Has anyone done this or have any opinion on it?

A twin GA airplane that is due for an overhaul for the engines is being sold for about $50k.
It needs 2 overhauls, which would realistically cost about $80k. It has lots of nice avionics in it.
Garmin 530w, 430w, ASPEN, stratus ADSB, shalin engine monitor, etc... Also, the airframe is in good shape.
Assuming all log books in order, would it make financial sense to buy the airplane, and strip it for the parts I wanted, and sell the rest of the parts that I could, and whatever is left goes to the junk yard?
Assuming I have my own hangar, and a place to keep it. Just curious as to thoughts on something like this.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a plan. Seems like you could come out ok. Don’t know why all log books being in order would matter other than the engine logs may be needed to get ‘core’ value
 
If you have room to sit on the parts until someone needs them go for it! That is the toughest part of scrapping airplanes as some of the larger parts like the wings etc.. don't go very fast.
 
midwestpa24 said:
Based on your original post, I would question why strip a good airframe just because of engines? Are both engines totally runout and inoperable? Depending on the type of aircraft, it might make a good twin for someone who could afford the overhauls. Sounds well equipped.
Click to expand...

Ken Ibold said:
I got nothing to add to this conversation, other than that it makes me a little sad to hear about airplanes parted out when they could be made airworthy.
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The state of the twin market is that the supply exceeds the demand, particularly for the older airframes. The operating expenses are high enough to where the only people who can afford to fly them want a later/nicer airframe.

There are a number of twins that can be had for Skyhawk money.
 
There are two good reasons I can think of to buy this plane:

1. You want to make a project of this model and are willing to invest the money to bring it up to your specs
2. You want to be in the salvage parts business.

There's already a used avionics market. You'll tie up a lot of capital and time buying this plane if you just want some cheap older avionics, so unless you want have a project and recoup your money over a couple of years, I wouldn't do it.
 
I know of a 401 that doesn't need the spar AD for another 400 hours, does need an annual but has 2 working engines and a 3rd core with bad bearings (worth something right?), that has an owner willing to sell for about 25k and can't get it sold. Twins are cheap, until you own it
 
TheGolfPilot said:
I know of a 401 that doesn't need the spar AD for another 400 hours, does need an annual but has 2 working engines and a 3rd core with bad bearings (worth something right?), that has an owner willing to sell for about 25k and can't get it sold. Twins are cheap, until you own it
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Surprised that hasn't been sucked up by someone wanting to cut holes in the belly and use as a mapping plane. I can think of some outfits where that would be the pride of their fleet unfortunately.
 
Todd82 said:
Surprised that hasn't been sucked up by someone wanting to cut holes in the belly and use as a mapping plane. I can think of some outfits where that would be the pride of their fleet unfortunately.
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I was thinking a skydiving place would want it, but two big turbos doing skydiving things probably isn’t ideal
 
I have scraped several planes, made more money selling parts than if I had rebuilt them and sold them as flying planes. Cessna 185 everything sells PA-23 you will be sitting on parts for years every scrap yard has several. Bid low sell high you have to be able to sit on parts and know what to get rid of as scrap.
 
George Chityat said:
Has anyone done this or have any opinion on it?...
Click to expand...

Yes. I picked up an Aztec of the same model as mine ('F') that was 3 years older but 2000 less hours on the airframe. It was bellied in gear up and wrote off the props and engines, so the insurance company wrote off the plane. I got it pretty cheap and sold enough parts and avionics in year 1 to more than cover my outlay. I did not sell any of the hard to secure airframe parts as the intent was to support my flying airplane and reduce the downtime and cost of acquiring stuff to keep it flying. So those things have been stripped and inventoried. The plane had gone through a major maintenance cycle 20 hours before the gear up so I got brand new tires, brakes & discs, and a host of other almost new consumables out of it. So far its been a successful experiment imo.

George Chityat said:
A twin GA airplane that is due for an overhaul for the engines is being sold for about $50k.
It needs 2 overhauls, which would realistically cost about $80k. It has lots of nice avionics in it.
Garmin 530w, 430w, ASPEN, stratus ADSB, shalin engine monitor, etc... Also, the airframe is in good shape.
Assuming all log books in order, would it make financial sense to buy the airplane, and strip it for the parts I wanted, and sell the rest of the parts that I could, and whatever is left goes to the junk yard?
Assuming I have my own hangar, and a place to keep it. Just curious as to thoughts on something like this.
Click to expand...

You can buy flying piston twins for a song these days. Why would anybody want to fuss with a non-flying example just to part out? What's your time worth?

There's not too many legacy piston twins out there that sell for more than the cost of two engine + accessory overhauls.
If this is a really nice example of something you would like to own (and fly) with premium avionics, no damage or corrosion, and so forth then you might want to consider buying it and finding another twin of the same model that is not nearly so nice but with <half time engines. Swap the engines, keep the best two of the four props, get this one flying, sell the cores, and part out the other one. You are thinking of making that effort anyway so you might as well have something to show for your time spent at the end of the process.
 
Just a couple of things. You'll probably want to tell the FAA it's been scrapped right away if you live in a jurisdiction with personal property taxes.
You also need to make sure your hangar lease (if you have such) doesn't preclude storing derelicts that aren't intended to fly (as opposed to your usual hangar queens that take up space but can't fly but the owner claims they will).

Understand that aluminum these days is pretty worthless once you get done. It's so bad, that we couldn't even get people to haul off a bunch of Navion "bulk metal" for free.
 
Ken Ibold said:
I got nothing to add to this conversation, other than that it makes me a little sad to hear about airplanes parted out when they could be made airworthy.
Click to expand...
My thoughts exactly. Two rebuilds and it's back in the air. (We need a Wheeler Dealers show for airplanes!)
 
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