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M20R Annual Costs?


dogbocks

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Since you're in Santa Cruz, give Top Gun a call in Stockton.  I would highly recommend them, been taking my Mooney to them for 20+ years.

I have an Ovation 3, so perhaps a different bird than what you're looking at.  You can count on probably $2,500 - 4,000 +/-.  I had some oddball items last annual that required replacement, one tire, the ELT and the airbags, so I wouldn't use mine this past year as a gauge.

Here's the problem you'll face - the prior owner may or may not have conducted preventative maintenance.  If the aircraft has been well maintained, you'll have few surprises.  If the aircraft has not been MSC maintained, good luck.

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Throw money at the problem till it goes away.

It's a hobby there is no real use for an airplane so more just for fun.

Have $10K left after you purchase

$2500 to get it home

Fix it fly it repeat

Oh you live in CA.  Just double everything for the rest of country

Edited by Yetti
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 After seeing all the numbers above what's wrong with Spirit or Jet Blue?:huh:
I don't fly myself because it's cheaper, that's for sure. I fly because it's awesome, but more importantly, I fly myselft because of the flexibility and because I can make travel an adventure with my family.

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On 1/13/2020 at 2:47 PM, dogbocks said:

 

The Cessna we own now needed some cylinders replaced shortly after purchasing it and a few other things. Everyone kept saying "yeah, your annuals will be $1000, easy" well they have all been $3k+ for various unexpected issues, so my financial adviser

 

 

A Mooney annual inspection, depending on the model, is a 24 man-hour deal if you do it by the book.  That's the inspection.  That's not additional repairs that you need to do if airworthiness  squawks appear.

To do that inspection, you're looking at about $2100 at a Mooney Service Center.  They'll probably be able to do it a bit faster than 24 hours and a conscientious A&P who is not a regular with Mooneys may or may not take a little bit longer.

I think my annual inspections normally were $3000-$5000 all-in on my M20J and M20K.  That was work performed at Don Maxwell Aviation at GGG.  That was also considering "if there's a squawk, fix it now" during the whole rest of the year.  I think the M20K ran me about $5000-$6000 annually in maintenance, flying it about 150 hours per year.  I had a couple really bad breaks with an alternator and then a coupler clutch failing within a few hours of one another (a really labor-intensive deal on the M20K), so that skewed it a bit high.

If I had an M20R, I would have an engine overhaul reserve in the bank and budget for $5000 annuals.  You'll probably do better than $5K but it's always best to be conservative.

The M20R is probably the easiest Mooney to work on, actually. :)

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On 1/17/2020 at 9:17 AM, Gagarin said:

 After seeing all the numbers above what's wrong with Spirit or Jet Blue?:huh:

I usually have about a 500 mile mission. I can fly for free for the rest of my life, granted it is space available. By the time I drive to the air carrier airport, park, clear security, wait at the gate I can be there in the Mooney before I would step foot on the jet.. Equally so, my destination airport is 5 minutes from my lodging rather than 1 hour along with the hassles there. In addition I have the fun of flying which is my life. So is it cheaper? Nope. Is it more time effective? You Bet! Is it more fun......you really have to wonder? Really?

 

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On 1/15/2020 at 2:21 PM, larrynimmo said:

What about tires and brakes, insurance, and engine fund?

That’s another 35$ an hour or so. Or $3500 per year.

Don’t forget the two grand a year for paint and interior refurbishment. That stuff comes later but when it comes it comes big. Also how about radios, you know $30k worth of radios every 10-15 years that’s real money too.  It’s a 2 to 3000 bucks a year in unscheduled repairs. Because of this, I think it’s pretty accurate. Or else you don’t spend any money on repairs for a couple years and then you spend 6000, but it still happens.  Nothing on an aircraft will go two thousand hours without some form of attention. I just spent eight hours diagnosing a friend of mine’s intercom problems. It’s fixed now. Bit it wasn’t easy. 
Buyers severely ding aircraft that haven’t been upgraded or the paint, interior, and radios are worn out. . I don’t get how people think they can pay the insurance bill, the annual bill and put gas in it and call that all good, that’s only about 60% of it. There was a guy that stopped by my hanger the other day. He used to have an M20J, picked her up at the factory new himself. I said why did you sell this airplane since you love it so much, he said well the engine was due and I didn’t have the money for it.  So he sold it. 17 years to save up the money for an overhaul, or pay the airplane off enough to borrow against it for the overhaul. But nope. He realized the $40,000 extra in cost of owning an airplane in the discount that he gave the buyer. (

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Flying it until it needs something expensive and then unloading it isn’t necessarily a bad idea. I did that with my first airplane. I paid $40K for a 1978 J with 750 hrs on it in 1986. I did some minor avionics upgrades and replaced the interior. In 1993 at 1500 hrs the cam was starting to go. It needed an engine, paint and some more serious avionics upgrades. Rather than put another $40-50K in it, I sold it to All American for $45K (yes, Ken Shoupe knew the engine condition). I just wanted to do other things with the money. But, I had planned it that way which is different than being forced to sell because of an expensive maintenance bill.

I used to have a spreadsheet I found somewhere that showed how to fully account for the long term cost of home ownership. If you filled in all the numbers honestly, you’d convince yourself to just rent.

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