I recently bought a 68H, located 250 miles from home. I bought a commercial plane ticket and flew out, and paid for a rental car. So there was that expense. When I looked at the plane it was pretty much as described. I paid $500 for a independent mechanic to do a pre-buy and he came back with a very clean bill of health. I was totally satisfied and flew it home the next day. It flew straight, and ran great and I was very pleased.
Part 2 - I decided that I wanted my own mechanic to inspect it, and since the annual was due in June I figured I would advance it to March - that way I got a full inspection outside of prime flying season. When they took it into the shop I was expecting a quick couple of days and a big checkmark. Instead, it took 6 weeks and cost me $4500
My mechanic is very thorough and started finding little issues - some unusual - which necessitated a much more thorough going over. It went into the shop on Mar 30 and was finished Saturday (May 7).
I was completely unprepared based on the pre-buy inspection. However, I am now fully confident that I am flying a very safe airplane. The good news is the engine (430 SMOH) is solid and runs excellent. The other issues, while nothing major, involved a LOT of hours of labor (53.5 hours, not including the many hours I helped).
So lesson learned - even a pre-buy inspection is no guarantee that you are buying a clean airplane. If I could have arranged it I would have happily paid an airline ticket for my own mechanic to have come with me. That said, the majority of things were discovered in an inspection that was way beyond the scope of a typical pre-buy. But not all the issues.
