Sad airplane thread

RickH said:
I looked at a sad barn-find Aeronca Chief last weekend. Less than 1100TT, but out of annual since 1998,hasn't been run since 2005, and has 40+ yr old cotton fabric. Even if they gave it to me it would take $30-35k to restore.
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Is it worth anything if you did restore it?

Would it be fun Restoring it, does that count?
 
Tom-D said:
Is it worth anything if you did restore it?

Would it be fun Restoring it, does that count?
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I’d like to do that when I retire someday... just for the joy and love of it... Golf doesn’t make economic sense either... :)
 
Huckster79 said:
I’d like to do that when I retire someday... just for the joy and love of it... Golf doesn’t make economic sense either... :)
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There used to be a couple of retired gentlemen pilots that had a hangar at Jefferson County airport, near Port Townsend, WA. They would buy and sell a few airplanes each year and have a little fun doing it. The sign on their hangar was a play on the Paul Masson winery tag line - "We will sell no airplane until we've played with it".

I think @pigpenracing might be related to them. ;)
 
RickH said:
I looked at a sad barn-find Aeronca Chief last weekend. Less than 1100TT, but out of annual since 1998,hasn't been run since 2005, and has 40+ yr old cotton fabric. Even if they gave it to me it would take $30-35k to restore.
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Now you know why new airplanes are expensive. Even if I did that restoration for myself, as a licensed mechanic, it would cost an awful lot. The fabric and finishing supplies would run to $8K or more. An engine overhaul would easily be $12K, seeing that parts for A-65s are so scarce. If it's been out of annual since '98 and not run since 2005, ground-running is implied, and the inside of that engine could be a mess of rust and corrosion. It might be entirely junk. The wooden wing spar AD would likely find some expensive defects. The aluminum wing ribs tend to rot out at their trailing edges, where moisture from rain or snow or condensation accumulates, especially if inadequate drain points were installed. If there was more than surface rust on the airframe tubing, a bunch of welding and new tubing would be in order. Instruments might all be sticking. If it was done at typical shop rates it could come to more than a new LSA might cost.

And you'd still have a light, marginally two-place airplane with no electrical system. No starter.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Now you know why new airplanes are expensive. Even if I did that restoration for myself, as a licensed mechanic, it would cost an awful lot. The fabric and finishing supplies would run to $8K or more. An engine overhaul would easily be $12K, seeing that parts for A-65s are so scarce. If it's been out of annual since '98 and not run since 2005, ground-running is implied, and the inside of that engine could be a mess of rust and corrosion. It might be entirely junk. The wooden wing spar AD would likely find some expensive defects. The aluminum wing ribs tend to rot out at their trailing edges, where moisture from rain or snow or condensation accumulates, especially if inadequate drain points were installed. If there was more than surface rust on the airframe tubing, a bunch of welding and new tubing would be in order. Instruments might all be sticking. If it was done at typical shop rates it could come to more than a new LSA might cost.

And you'd still have a light, marginally two-place airplane with no electrical system. No starter.
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Seems these days the guys around here are collecting 2 or 3 examples of a type and making one airplane out of it - wings from one that was taken apart and the wings and control surfaces hung on a barn wall, steel tube fuselage that isn't corroded from another, and so forth. Seems the only economical way to restore one of these now, assuming you value your own labor at zero.

At the extreme, I have a friend that has a Beech Staggerwing project in pieces in his hangar. I think the very prospect of restoring it is so daunting he's afraid to start.
 
Tried to negotiate with a guy on an old Stinson Junior project. Needed full restoration and one wing rebuilt. The engine hadn’t been overhauled since the army did them and hasn’t run in 20 years. He wanted more for the engine and prop than the whole project was worth.
 
GRG55 said:
Seems the only economical way to restore one of these now,
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I've found it is very specific to the model restored. Some models have unique construction that require multiple airframes to complete while other models can be restored with a bin of 4130 tubing and PMA sheetmetal parts. Where the market price is the same as the restoration/repair cost, unless you got the aircraft for free, it may or may not be economical. And there are still shops out there that make good coin at restoring aircraft for a profit and at a reasonable sale point.

However, it can still be economical at the private owner level with the right aircraft like a Cub/Super Cub. The last Super Cub project I worked on had about $4000 in recover materials (complete), $2500 in metal repair/parts (tail structure/RH spar bent), and about $12,000 in labor. The plane had sat for several years after a ground loop and the new owner picked it up for about $20,000 and came out ahead after the restore/repair with the plane valued at $85k.
 
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Finally remembered to take a picture of our only ramp rat today. The guys tell me this was bought and flown in with the intention of starting a skydiving school. Something happened, and this thing never moved again.

The magnesium control surfaces have rotted off of it. I think some Bonanza guy looked at it last year and said there was hardly anything worth salvaging on it. Shame
 
WWFeldman said:
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Finally remembered to take a picture of our only ramp rat today. The guys tell me this was bought and flown in with the intention of starting a skydiving school. Something happened, and this thing never moved again.

The magnesium control surfaces have rotted off of it. I think some Bonanza guy looked at it last year and said there was hardly anything worth salvaging on it. Shame
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Such is the fate of a lot of T-Bones. Orphaned engines, orphaned airframe, not really worth much, if anything.
 
I'd love to take on a 'rescue' project but I don't have the place to do the work and don't know enough about planes to be confident in what I'm doing. I used to build race engines for my drag cars back in the 90's and have restored a few cars but planes are a different animal. I had a friend that had about 18 cars and not 1 ran. He always said he would restore every car. He was about 40 at the time and I told him he couldn't possibly restore all of them in his life. He got mad and said he would. A few years later the bank took his house and debtors sued and kept all of his cars. In the end he had nothing and never even started working on any of them. This was about 1990 when this went on and he lost everything about 1998 or so. He daily drove the 1973 Vega for awhile but it was the only car that ran. The last 5 years I knew him he was driving a Dodge Aries K car that he borrowed from another friend and he had that for several years.

Quick list of cars:
1985 Olds Cutlass (was very clean but in 1000 pieces. parents bought it brand new)
1973 Chevy Vega SS
1976 Cosworth Vega
1970 Dodge Duster
(2) 1958 Chevy Impalas
1967 Impala
1979 Datsun pickup

Can't even remember the rest. But same scenario. I would have loved to have got that 1973 Vega SS and 1970 Duster from him and restored those.
 
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