High Time Cessna Wings

D

Danny Dub

Pre-Flight
Joined
Feb 7, 2018
Messages
80
Display Name
Display name:
Danny Dub
My mechanic said not no but he'll no when I brought up buying a Cessna with 20k on the clock. The one I'm looking at has been well maintained and obviously many parts are new.

In general terms, is my mechanic right or assuming they are properly maintained can you safely and confidently buy a high Time airframe?

Thanks as always!

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
Danny Dub said:
In general terms, is my mechanic right or assuming they are properly maintained can you safely and confidently buy a high Time airframe?
Click to expand...
In my experience on the mx side there are other conditons that are just as important as total time when looking at an aircraft. I've seen 3000 hr death traps and 30,000 hr top shelf examples in both the airplane and helicopter worlds. Perhaps ask your mechanic what specifically he has issues with. Regardless I wouldnt give up on something solely based on total time.
 
Negotiate with the seller to split costs for an SID inspection. Inspecting old high time airframes is exactly what the SID is for.
 
Danny Dub said:
My mechanic said not no but he'll no when I brought up buying a Cessna with 20k on the clock. The one I'm looking at has been well maintained and obviously many parts are new.

In general terms, is my mechanic right or assuming they are properly maintained can you safely and confidently buy a high Time airframe?

Thanks as always!

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

If you want to keep your mechanic I would say not to buy one.

my 2 cents.
 
More context would be needed to provide any sort of accurate opinion/assessment. "High time Cessna" can cover a lot of models and they're not all alike.

There is no way I would make a decision to purchase or not purchase based solely on the amount of time an airframe has on it.
 
mondtster said:
More context would be needed to provide any sort of accurate opinion/assessment. "High time Cessna" can cover a lot of models and they're not all alike.

There is no way I would make a decision to purchase or not purchase based solely on the amount of time an airframe has on it.
Click to expand...
I'm this case, a 75 Cardinal. A&P AI owned and operated for the last several years. Many upgrades and looks good just lots of time on the airframe

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
Danny Dub said:
I'm this case, a 75 Cardinal. A&P AI owned and operated for the last several years. Many upgrades and looks good just lots of time on the airframe
Click to expand...

I wondered if it was the 20k hour cardinal that surfaced recently which is partially why I asked.

The Cardinal and its spar carrythrough would be a concern to me. It may also be the primary reason why your mechanic said absolutely not.
 
Do the spar test... if you're willing to pay for it and walk away if you're not happy with the results.
 
RyanShort1 said:
Do the spar test... if you're willing to pay for it and walk away if you're not happy with the results.
Click to expand...
The Eddy current spar test has been done and passed. I guess it is just a SB at this time but may become an AD in the future. My mechanic just shut down the idea like I would be crazy to consider the plane. Didn't really want to know anything else on the condition. Maybe he is cherry picking what plants he wants to be involved with. Who knows.

Thanks for the info and advice everyone!


Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
There are more places that fatigue or corrode than just the spar. There is stuff in the tail that cracks, for instance. You'd need a good mechanic, familiar with the Cardinal's weaknesses, to do a good prebuy on it.

SIDs are great, but some of them demand some expensive NDI, and disassembly of the airframe to get the tests done. That gets expensive, especially as part of a prebuy on an airplane you might turn down. For instance, eddy current checks for cracks in the bolt bores of fittings.

And on top of that, you'll want to sell that airplane sometime, and such a high time will be against it, especially if the used-airplane market goes soft.
 
Cessna publishes a 10,000 hr inspection report............or some such name. It can be purchased from a Cessna dealer. I "think" it is mandatory on 135 airplanes.
 
If it passes the SIDs I’d be comfortable with the aircraft. The SIDs stop at 30,000 hours. So the typical thought is at 30,000 Cessna recommends to beer can it.
 
ARFlyer said:
If it passes the SIDs I’d be comfortable with the aircraft. The SIDs stop at 30,000 hours. So the typical thought is at 30,000 Cessna recommends to beer can it.
Click to expand...
So even though Cessna's do not have an airframe life limit like Cirrus I guess they don't last any longer.
 
Skyknight320 said:
So even though Cessna's do not have an airframe life limit like Cirrus I guess they don't last any longer.
Click to expand...
The Cessna ttX (Corvalis) has a 26,500 hour airframe time limit. I think all new designs will have a life limit, and it will be a result of input via SDRs and accident reports. If one spends enough money and time on inspections and timely repairs on a metal airplane, it could last much longer than 30K hours, but just what tiny percentage of airplanes get that level of care?

New cars are bought by people who can afford them. Once they get a bunch of miles on them and stuff starts to need work, they trade them off for a new one. People who can't afford new cars buy used cars, along with all the problems that accumulated in them, and they drive them until they're not worth much at all. Some such cars sit in out-of-the-way places until their value increases because they're now vintage vehicles, and someone buys them and pours money and time into them and makes them valuable again.

Airplanes are no different. If you don't maintain an airplane properly, it falls apart. There will be Cirruses that won't get maintained and won't make it to anywhere near their airframe lift limits.
 
Dan Thomas said:
The Cessna ttX (Corvalis) has a 26,500 hour airframe time limit. I think all new designs will have a life limit, and it will be a result of input via SDRs and accident reports. If one spends enough money and time on inspections and timely repairs on a metal airplane, it could last much longer than 30K hours, but just what tiny percentage of airplanes get that level of care?

New cars are bought by people who can afford them. Once they get a bunch of miles on them and stuff starts to need work, they trade them off for a new one. People who can't afford new cars buy used cars, along with all the problems that accumulated in them, and they drive them until they're not worth much at all. Some such cars sit in out-of-the-way places until their value increases because they're now vintage vehicles, and someone buys them and pours money and time into them and makes them valuable again.

Airplanes are no different. If you don't maintain an airplane properly, it falls apart. There will be Cirruses that won't get maintained and won't make it to anywhere near their airframe lift limits.
Click to expand...
I don't think an airplane can be compared to a car since new cars are affordable and new airplanes are not. When my son took drivers training he learned in a new car, when he took flying lessons he learned in a 43 year old airplane. In fact the airplane he learned in is older than what I did my private in 30 years ago. Something just seems wrong with this.
 
Last edited:
Skyknight320 said:
Something just seems wrong with this.
Click to expand...
Not "something." Many things.

Liability is huge. Flying is terribly unforgiving of complacency, ignorance and a bunch of other attitudes. SO bad accidents happen, and lawyers get involved. Insurance for the manufacturers is expensive, and gets who pays for that?

Maintenance: Airplanes don't like to be flown until something quits. Your car quits, you coast off the side of the road and call a tow truck. Your engine quits, you might die. So maintenance is important, and good maintenance isn't cheap.

Volume. Many millions of cars are built every year. 78 million last year, down from 92 million in 2019 and 97 million in 2018. Airplanes? 1155 piston-engined singles were shipped last year, worldwide. 851 of those were US made. Another way to look at it: 67,532 times more cars than airplanes were built.

The sheer volume of automobiles make them much cheaper to build, and much of the manufacturing is automated. It's very difficult to automate aircraft production with the light and strong materials that must be used. It's been tried.

Training: Compared to getting a PPL, a driver's license is a piece of cake. Much easier, much quicker. (And for some drivers, it shows. Too little training.) Most people don't want to spend so much time studying and learning. Many that start give up. They go buy a boat and are on the water, zooming around, the same day.

When I learned to fly in the early '70s, a new Cessna 172 was about the same price as a three-bedroom house in the city where I grew up. Now, the 172SP is about the same price as a house in that same town. Not much has changed that way, in Canada at least. Flying never was cheap.
 
Thanks again and great points all around. It looks like a cool plane but I think we will pass based on a lot of the factors we have discussed. Just too many unknowns. Someone may just get a great plane, or they may buy a major headache.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
Was it 20k airframe time of pipeline patrol, or a lot of long hours flying, or used by students beating the hell out of it.
 
There are still numerous 1943-1946 DC-3’s in service. Most have more than 100,000hrs.

A Cessna 152 flight school bird that has been meticulously maintained could be a good buy. I recently was offered one with 17,000hrs. It looked like new. Recent paint, panel/avionics, low time engine, had belonged to the flying club at Warner-Robins AFB. Logs since new.

A C421 that has been tied out and not flown in 10yrs, run away! don’t walk!
 
Something that maybe of interest is that according to talk give by a FAA fatigue specialist (at an AOPA summit when these still existed) is that planes built under the older CAR3 standard were often stronger since the designers voluntarily chose a greater than required safety factor due to greater uncertainty using a slide rule and pencil is the design.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top