I think that price is probably misquoted, but it's a possibility. Aircraft doesn't have the intercoolers (you can tell because they don't have the scoop/inlet under the nacelles. That's a $20K upgrade. Not entirely necessary, but it is a sought after upgrade, so this lowers the price slightly. Still, it sounds too cheap even with this feature missing. If it's not, you'd be a fool not to snap it up!
As for fuel system I have a 601P and the fuel system is simplicity itself in it. Much, much simpler than any of the Cessnas and Pipers. Literally set it and forget it. All Ted Smith designs had simple fuel systems.
The reasons people used to crash them due to fuel starvation is because they didn't understand the gaging and were taught the wrong technique - I'll come back to that, but first a basic overview of the Aerostars fuel system: There are 3 tanks in total. 65gal in each wing, and a 44gal fuselage tank. Engines are gravity fed from wing tank
and fuselage tank. For every 4 gallons it sips from the wing, it takes 1 gallon from the fuselage. This means that the wings will run dry after 130gals and you'll now only have the gals in the fuselage left. So if you don't touch anything the plane will run until all its tanks are empty without having to switch anything. Set it and forget it.
However, and here is where people messed up, there is the possibility to cross feed from the opposite wing for balancing purposes. This means that ALL the fuel in that wing now feeds the opposite engine and it bypasses the fuselage tank completely. So if you keep the valve in cross feed, it will run until that wing is dry and then the engine will quit, even though you have plenty of fuel in fuselage tank left. All you need to do is switch valve back to normal mode, but people didn't do that and freaked out when the engine quit. Also, one of the biggest Aerostar dealers who shall remain nameless, told all its buyers to run the ship in double cross feed "to empty the wing tanks first" and the switch to normal. Well, what happened was both engines died from starvation when the wings ran dry, and the fuselage tank didn't get used at all and was full of fuel!
The second problem was at the very beginning the Aerostar came with a single fuel gage and you had to SWITCH measuring probes to see what the reading was for each tank. Which meant they'd forget they were sampling the fuselage tank in cross feed mode and thought they had plenty of fuel. It was a bad design and was replaced with a 3-piece fuel gage as an AD in the late 70's. No Aerostar has the old single gage left, so that's just a long lived reputation that won't go away.
Aerostars are as honest as they come. They fly great on one engine, they have dead simple fuel system, they're built like brick s**t outhouses (stressed to +6G and it took +14G to break the elevator during certification). No inflight break-ups recorded. They'll warn you when they're about to stall with a 10 knot buffet (certified with no stall warner because it gives such ample warning), they're very easy on the fuel for a twin, etc, etc.
Sure, you need to be on point with your speeds - that wing doesn't like to fly slow and it can bite if you get too slow and start loading it up in a turn etc. It also needs a bit of rwy and is not a great climber below 100kts (above that they'll climb 2000ft/min). As long as you fly it by the book, they'll reward you with the crispest handling this side of an aerobatic. Great aircraft - don't let anyone tell you anything different.
Good one, Greg! You have my vote for the Post of the day!
