New engine or new plane?

[Challenged]

Bare with me as I try to give you as much background information on this issue as I think is necessary...

I own a Beech Sierra, and honestly it's been a perfect fit for the flying I currently do. My wife loves it because she can pile in lots of baggage, or we can skimp on the luggage and take other couples with us on trips. Additionally, I'm about 1/2 way through my IR training and hope to maybe get my commercial after that.

The airplane has a 6 pack, basic radios, a GX55 GPS, a 496 with XM weather, but no autopilot. The interior and the exterior of the plane are both about a 7 or 8.

My most frequent trip is a 120nm haul to see relatives.

That said..the engine on it is getting high time (~1700 on a 2000 tbo). I've got a few minor oil drips in a few locations that my mechanic is going to try and straighten out (just had an oil change done today). No major issues since I've had the plane though.

Even if a Sierra is the plane that I could potentially see myself in for the rest of my life, I'm wondering if it makes sense to upgrade the avionics over time and overhaul the engine eventually on this particular plane, or is it best to always sell high-time engine planes and move on?

I guess the real kicker here is that I got a very fair deal on the Sierra when I purchased it, and roughly speaking, I could get a major overhaul on the engine today and using my purchase price + major overhaul, I think I would still be under the cost of Sierra's that I currently see on controller.com with ~1000 hour engines.

 

[Ted]

Keep in mind that most people try to sell their planes when the engines reach overhaul, because they don't want to lay out the cash. So you will be competing with other planes with so-so avionics, high-time engines, etc. This means low prices.

What would make sense, I think, is to evaluate whether or not the Sierra is ultimately the plane you want to keep. If you like it and it fits your needs (both current and expected future), then spending the $25,000 or so on a new engine and another $20,000 or so on avionics upgrades may not be a bad idea.

Alternately, you could look at what $45,000 plus the resale value of your plane would buy, and see if there's something that looks appealing to you.

 

[wabower]

Sounds like you have plenty of airplane for your needs. I'd be willing to bet that the differences in your actual block times in anything else wouldn't justify trading, especially if your annual usage is similar to most GA birds. The devil you know is usually better than the one you don't. And you might milk another 500 hours from the engine. Read Mike Bush's articles before you think about overhaul or trade.

Bare with me as I try to give you as much background information on this issue as I think is necessary...

I own a Beech Sierra, and honestly it's been a perfect fit for the flying I currently do. My wife loves it because she can pile in lots of baggage, or we can skimp on the luggage and take other couples with us on trips. Additionally, I'm about 1/2 way through my IR training and hope to maybe get my commercial after that.

The airplane has a 6 pack, basic radios, a GX55 GPS, a 496 with XM weather, but no autopilot. The interior and the exterior of the plane are both about a 7 or 8.

My most frequent trip is a 120nm haul to see relatives.

That said..the engine on it is getting high time (~1700 on a 2000 tbo). I've got a few minor oil drips in a few locations that my mechanic is going to try and straighten out (just had an oil change done today). No major issues since I've had the plane though.

Even if a Sierra is the plane that I could potentially see myself in for the rest of my life, I'm wondering if it makes sense to upgrade the avionics over time and overhaul the engine eventually on this particular plane, or is it best to always sell high-time engine planes and move on?

I guess the real kicker here is that I got a very fair deal on the Sierra when I purchased it, and roughly speaking, I could get a major overhaul on the engine today and using my purchase price + major overhaul, I think I would still be under the cost of Sierra's that I currently see on controller.com with ~1000 hour engines.

 

[steingar]

I'd run the engine until you have good reason not to do so. An engine past TBO is far less likely to break than one that's just been overhauled.

 

[JOhnH]

I agree with Ted, but I would allocate more than 20k for avionics
And if you plan to fly single pilot ifr I highly recommend autopilot

I am thinking $50k for the panel. Be meticulous when breaking
In he new engine and it will serve you well for a long time

IF YOU THINK THIS THE pLANE YOU WANT TO GROW OLD
WITH.

 

[tyndall]

Better the devil you know...

If you like the plane, keep it. Why sell and buy another, just to have to start from scratch with all the little nagging squawks you'll be finding for a long time. The odds of finding the right plane, with the right amount of hours, with your idea of the right avionics, in the right color, in the right price range, is like winning the lottery.

At 1700 hours I'd be putting it on oil analysis so you can get an early start on monitoring trends. It still has lots of life left in it.

 

[poadeleted20]

If it meets your needs, keep it and do what you want to improve it as you'd like it. Too many surprises in other people's airplanes. Yeah, you can talk yourself out of upgrades over the lack of cash return on investment upon sale, but if you're going to keep it, who cares what it will bring when it sells (other than your heirs at the estate sale, and bugger them -- this is your plane to fly, not their money to hoard). And that doesn't even begin to cover the cost of selling this plane and finding the next plane, including traveling to look, prepurchase inspections, fixing all the hidden stuff missed on the inspection (it's always there), etc.

As for how much to spend on upgrades, that's up to you based on what you want and what you can afford. It would be easy to spend $50-70K on super-fantastic improvments to a plane like yours (paint, interior, engine, avionics including a super Garmin panel with MFD, GPS, datalink, autopilot, etc), but it would be equally easy to have a lot of capability and appearance improvement for less than half that. Use your own judgement based on what you can afford and how you use the plane.

 

[Tom-D]

Why would any one have their engine overhauled when they could buy an engine like this
Always the largest stock of the best used engines!!

0320d36, 160HP, only 4.6 hours since new limits overhaul, balanced and blueprinted, new Lycoming cylinders, no damage at all, complete with accessories. No core required $17,500 outright.

 

[Sac Arrow]

I was faced with the decision of face an upcoming overhaul or replacement of the TSIO 360 in my Turbo Arrow. I ultimately sold the airplane while there was still some life in the engine, but in part one of the factors in that decision was that I wanted to downgrade to either a 172 class airplane, or maybe a non-turbo Arrow class retract. If I had intended to stick with the TA for a few more years, an engine replacement would have been more economical.

 

[andybean]

I just went through this and wound up trading up. Buying and selling an airplane is a royal pain in the a_ _.

I wanted a faster airplane and it would have been a waste for me to rebuild an engine and then sell the airplane.

If you are happy with what you have, hold onto it.

 

[Ted]

I just went through this and wound up trading up. Buying and selling an airplane is a royal pain in the a_ _.

So is buying and selling a house, car, etc.

You either price it really low and someone snatches it up, or you price it where it should be and you get tire kickers. Of course, if you price it low, you still get tire kickers. Sometimes moreso.

 

[Challenged]

Thanks for all the information on this guys. Trading up is something I've been giving a lot of thought to as part of this process, but I'm just not sure it makes much sense for me.

Neither my wife, nor I, care for airplanes without pilot side doors, and after owning a 152 for a while, I also believe that I generally prefer owning a low wing aircraft. I'm aware that this combination of "likes" limits the aircraft that I could move up to and hit all my main points.

150 knot cruise (anything less probably wouldn't be worth selling the Sierra)
Low wing (self-serve fueling ease)
Pilot side door (safety and loading/unloading convenience)

With those key points, I'm thinking I might as well just keep the Sierra (minus some speed), do the necessary engine work when it's needed and put money into interior, paint and avionics over time to make the plane exactly as I want.

 

[hindsight2020]

Well, I'll give you my prison story for some reassurance you're not alone on this decision.

I'm on the same boat with my recently acquired '80s warrior ii. When I start off from my acquisition price, which was mostly discounted for an engine at TBO, you can't find a single archer ii (cherokee 180s and archer Is don't really compete for my attention since i'm happy and accustomed to the late models) with the panel my Warrior Dos came with. Most of the stuff out there in for-sale land is not even approach /G equipped and the radio stack is a bunch of funky Narco or single comm kx-170Bs. Im looking at 20K just to retrofit a new aircraft purchase to my existing panel, if I go by used retail price and nominal installation rates, specifically for the ifr GPS installation. There's just no archer ii out there cheap enough I can retrofit its panel to match mine, for less than just keeping my warrior at the current original capital outlay.

Considering my mission is 90% solo 400-450nm one way, 5% two people and bags and 5% 3/4 people sightseeing flight of one hour, the only logical step for me is to continue to operate my 160hp -320 well post TBO and run it out real good, field overhaul it for 15K when I can't taxi to the hold short line on anything but WOT , OR sell it at the same discount (or a small loss) from what I bought it for and shift gears on my mission profile by moving into the experimental two seater market ( probably glasairs) and get the 150ktas performance while chucking 5% of my mission (the 3rd/4th passenger sightseeing flight), if I'm going to increase my capital outlay. Chucking out two seats and gaining 40+kts is cheaper than retrofitting an O-360 into the warrior or buying an Archer/C182 of the same vintage and panel as my 110kt warrior.


I'd keep running that engine. Considering how anal most folks on here are (and that's a compliment btw, I'm a an outright pirate compared to how you folks baby your rigs) about babying what amounts to a 1940s tractor engine technology, I'd say you have yeeeears of operation left on that thing before you'd even have to pose this question in the first place. It'll make it well past TBO. Tailwinds!