He bought it from a person that died a short time ago............. I really don't know what condition the was previously, that's something that would have to be determine from the log books. The plane has TT 1800 and 5 hrs smoh. The engine was rebuilt by a shop in his area. I do not know the terms very well, but he reskined entirely the plane, put new windows, seats, carpet, wheels, plastics, screws, rebuilt propeller and painted it. It really looks very nice, but has only few hours flying.
This all bothers me. It could very well be OK but the person who owned this airplane let it sit for YEARS and YEARS without flying it. It corroded so badly that the skin had to be replaced. Might have even had holes corroded thru it. There has been discussion here and on the Yahoo group about this just in the past week and what I am wondering was how badly the airplane was corroded and what was NOT replaced. Somewhere along the line, the mechanic had to make a judgement call about where to quit replacing and start covering with paint. What is hidden inside in the way of corrosion and deteriotation that you cannot see.
Another big question is did the person replacing the skins, especially on the wings, have the jigs to do this properly or did they just do it without the jigs. You can easily get away without jigs on the fuselage if you are just replacing skin due to corrosion, you use the old one for a pattern and it fits perfectly (I had a friend do this on a 182) Wings are a different story, you could use existing skins for patterns (including holes) but you really need that jig to get the washout in the wing just right. Ask how he did the reskin and what he replaced.
Low time airframe means little or nothing in this case. There are 5000 hr airframes that might be in better condition, you just don't know.
Get a real good off field mechanic and have him throughly go thru it. Someone like Carl who will take the time to go thru and look for hidden "treasures" you don't want.
The logs in this case won't tell you much about the previous condition. They may give you an idea of how long it sat from the previous annual, thats about it.
Charles
