What to worry about in buying a used plane?

Over the years have used Norvic on a variety of engines, and have been satisfied. You are not getting change out of £18k for your typical 4-cylinder, which would include overhauling accessories (magnetos, vacuum), if they haven’t been overhauled recently. With the weaker £ this budget may be out of date.

The 70 year old Continental did not need a new crankshaft, and was less. In theory the Continentals are better for ‘sitting’ with less corrosion, so perhaps more suitable for aircraft that are not flying 100 hours plus every year.

I think I’m in the wrong job (I.T.). Anyone know how much a good engine mechanic earns?

Peter wrote:

If the crankshaft is scrap, the OH is probably uneconomical and a “manufacturer remanufactured engine” (at ~ twice the quoted cost of the OH) is likely the most economic option.

We had to replace the crankshaft when overhauling an Lyco. O-360 engine last year. The quote for an original replacement crankshaft was about 1/3 of the quoted overhaul price and for a PMA crankshaft about 1/4 of the quoted overhaul price. (This was from a quality engine shop.) If a factory remanufactured engine was twice the OH cost, I don’t see that it would have been economical. (In our case replacing the engine was not an option for other reasons.)

Try that with an IO540

Anyone know how much a good engine mechanic earns?

A lot less than a guy working on Mercs or BMWs, and about 1/3 of what he would get working on Airbuses (although the latter is a really horrible job, night work, outdoors).

Peter wrote:

A lot less than a guy working on Mercs or BMWs

I suspect those guys get peanuts, and a big chunk of the money you pay over the cost of parts goes to the stealership.

It is true in the UK… FWIW. For some reason GA mechanic pay is low. I think most of them get under 20k.

Peter wrote:

It is true in the UK… FWIW. For some reason GA mechanic pay is low. I think most of them get under 20k.

Quite easy to calculate backwards. What is your accepted mechanics hourly price you are willing to pay? Say you would pay £80 per billed working hour. Say you accept the business owner needs about 30% uplift to be able to provide a stable employees contract and make money in return for taking the personal risk of running a business and taking responsibility for their employees. £80 go down to £62. Running a sustainable GA mechanics shop usually requires selling price to salary ratio of 4. £62 go down to £16. A workers year has about 1,800 working hours at 100 percent. Now the shop does follow work-life balance and calculates 75 percent of the working power to be billable. 1,800 working hours go down to 1,350 billable hours. 1,350 billable hours at £16 do £21,600 yearly salary. 20k sounds plausible and higher it will go only if the you customer pays more. We are talking leisure business, not necessary for living in the end. Am I correct?

If you look at theproce of an engine overhaul in the UK you will probably find a difference of between £5&7k for the same job.

This is the cost difference between a skilled engine technician and a grease monkey.

Most of the B1/B2 licenced guys will move to the commercial side where pay tend to be really good but work is painful (you have to deal with captains on the ramp or management in base), so for GA, you are left with few skilled guys and the rest, then you spend money on extremes tasks: do nothing just papers or do a big engine overhaul…

Not sure when a GA B3/ELA licence is comming to life? But as far as I know, there are not that many who get a Part66 B1/B3 paper “for GA fun”, unlike those on pilot side who find it fun to get a PPL/CPL/ATPL in GA with no plans to work for airliners!

This is digressing more and more but probably the main problem with GA maintenance is that most companies have such a variable reputation (and deservedly so) that the bulk of owners at any airfield fly away for maintenance. So a bug chunk of the “catchment area” is wasted. So the typical maint company might be looking after say just 50 planes, plus odd bits. 50 planes will bring you of the order of 300k/year which is enough for the owner to draw say 70k (a hardly amazing amount for the headaches of running a business; it is what a middle manager at some insurance company is on, and 300k would be more appropriate) plus a minimum wage for the staff.

If companies made their catchment area work better they would achieve a lot more.

Against that you have a lot of owners who are really tight, especially schools…

Back to overhauls, you can see a 2x difference in quotes. However the lower end of that will likely be a crook job. One company, central Europe, just changes the cylinders, repaints the crankcase, and prints off the EASA-1.