First time TB-10 owner (nearly) one year in

In the spirit of @UdoR’s recent thread on first year of ownership, I thought I’d share a rather different experience after almost a year with the TB-10 I purchased in Romania last February. Unlike his purchase, I bought an airplane I knew would need some work to get it where I wanted it to be. While I would have preferred to buy something that was a perfect fit, I found my requirements just could not be met with anything on the market. I wanted a TB-10 with five seats, an autopilot, low airframe & engine hours, equipped for IFR (incl WAAS GPS, mode S, 2x 8,33 radios, and slaved compass or glass), and with nice paint and interior. I realised quickly I’d have to compromise and address deficiencies, so I tried to focus on just the areas that would be difficult or impossible to address later.

After a long search I found YR-MAY, a five-seat 1980 TB with 5-year-old overhaul on engine and prop (only 350 hours on both), about 2000 airframe hours, a non-functional Century IIB, mode S, one 8,33 radio, and a King slaved compass + HSI. Cosmetically pretty rough and definitely a few squawks to deal with, but the inspection showed no big gotchas. I flew to Romania, paid the 61k, and flew immediately to Straubing to have them overhaul the autopilot. That cost only €700, after which I had a perfectly functioning autopilot!

Airplane at Straubing:

However, on that first leg and the next one home to Rotterdam I immediately found a few new issues:

1. On my first landing to clear immigration at LRAR the nosewheel had a terrible, bone-rattling shimmy.
2. There was an intermittent static on the radio that made it nearly useless. This resulted in a 7600 squawk and lost comms procedure flying into LOAN and some periods of discomfort at various other moments. But I was VFR, so I just dealt with it.
3. The engine seemed to misfire occasionally.

I had already planned installation of a refurbished GNS530W I purchased from Sarasota Avionics in the US plus a Garmin FlightStream 210, and had arranged for a shop in NL to do this work plus my known list of squawks. With the engine misfiring and bad shimmy I arranged to take it to them immediately rather than keep flying. This resulted in a series of shop visits over the following months, during which I had the following items addressed:

• Nosewheel shimmy: Turns out the previous owner flew without the wheel fairings and from a grass field, and the shimmy only showed itself with the fairing and on asphalt. I had to have a combination of bushings from Socata as well as custom machined ones to repair the problem, which cost me about 2k in parts and labor.
• Misfire + radio static: The previous mechanic had cut a slit in the ignition wire and covered it with aluminum tape to attach a timing light. This resulted in the misfiring and arcing (i.e. radio interference) which produced the static. Stupid practice, but easy fix. The spark plugs were also not within tolerance, so I replaced them.
• Door struts: The struts on the gull wing doors no longer had sufficient pressure to hold them, so I ordered new ones.
• Anticollision beacon: I knew it wasn’t working when I bought it and thought it was a bulb. After removing the assembly, turns out there was nothing under the red cover. So new Whelen beacon.
• Gyro mount: The remote gyro mount had lost pressure and was wobbling, so I replaced it.
• Oil pressure indicator: It would periodically drop to zero. Turned out to be a wiring issue.
• Vacuum hose: The AI failed while taxiing for departure from the shop due to an old cracked hose.
• Various wiring issues: Intercom, PTT switch, COM antenna connector
• Installation of instrument lighting system: New NuLite overlays + Socata dimmer module and pot
• Autopilot NAV coupling not working: had to track down the correct wiring for this, which took some time
• Strobe lights not working: repaired wiring for existing strobes

Total parts for the above work came to just over 2k, most of which was the lighting and beacon, and labor was 5k. About half of that was expected from the inspection and the other half was a surprise. The GNS530W cost me €8500 (including shipping and import duty), the FS210 €900, and installation plus cleaning up the old panel was 7k.

So far:
Purchase price 61.000
Parts 2.700
Non-avionics labor 5.000
Avionics 9.400
Avionics installation 7.000
Total: 85.000

Panel before:

Panel after:

At that point I had a pretty capable NVFR + IFR airplane, which I flew like that for quite a while and on a number of long trips. I also used it to complete my FAA IR conversion. But it still looked ugly, so time for phase two. After shopping around quite a bit, I settled on Termikas in LT to do the refurbishment. This was based on their reputation for very high quality and attention to detail. They completely disassemble, strip, and repair or replace every piece of the airplane, apply new corrosion protection, and of course paint and completely new interior. A visit to their shop showed that they have a real craftsman approach to the job, so I signed a contract and delivered the airplane in September.

The original quote for the work was 26k plus parts and additional labor for unknown defects. We also decided to replace the aging KMA20 audio panel and install a new GMA345, parts 2.200 and labor 2.800. During the disassembly and inspection they discovered a large number of broken or loose rivets (6000 in total), which added 2 months and 11k to the price. Additional airframe parts + new bolts/washers + alochrom treatment + new vacuum pump resulted in another 10k in parts and labor. We also had nearly two months delay due to a bout of COVID in the shop that stopped a lot of work.

Refurbishment:
Paint + interior 26.000
Audio panel 5.000
Rivets 11.000
Other parts + defects 10.000
Total: 52.000

Airplane state as of a couple weeks ago:

The airplane should be done in the next couple months, in time for spring weather. The project has taken much longer than I expected, due to the extra riveting work and COVID delays, but honestly the weather in LT would have probably prevented even an IFR departure without a lot of luck. It also cost 21k more than expected, which isn’t a great surprise. But I’m glad to have taken this road, because the quality standard is very high, and we will have a like-new airplane for 137k total invested. The only remaining projects would be an engine monitor and eventually replacing the AI & HSI with something glass.

Obviously this route isn’t for everyone. I could have flown the airplane day VFR as-is with only minor investment. I’m quite sure the “defects” found would be present on most 40-year-old airplanes, and it feels a bit like we’ve reset the clock back to zero with this refurbishment. I am under no delusion that the “investment” would pay off in resale, but I am very happy and looking forward to many years of flying an airplane that I know is in great shape. I’ll update the post when I have more pics of the progress!