M20J pre-purchase comparisons

[jlunseth]

If its the plane I am thinking of, I flew that plane several times a few decades ago. N57651 in my logbook. They have vacillated back and forth about selling, or renting it out, or selling, or renting it out, or ... . They do quite a bit of instruction, but most of their school planes are Archers, Warriors, Skyhawks, and one or two Arrows. The Mooney has never flown very much. It looks clean, instrumentation is not modernized. I would want to do a good pre-buy, probably have Willmar (Oasis Aero) do it. They have their own maintenance shop and staff, but I think they have sent the J to Willmar once or twice. Eric (Rudningen) at Oasis would give you a sound pre-buy on it. 

TBird are pretty good people. I have had my aircraft there for a little over a decade and taken quite a bit of instruction. If I can help get a look at it, let me know. Its kept in their community hangar.

 

Edited August 22, 2020 by jlunseth

[GMBrown]

Re: zinc chromate to epoxy switch time frame, attached article from MAPA circa 2000 states that M20J's after 1986 switched to epoxy, although there was some caveat stated.  If its off-white its likely epoxy, if its green to yellow, its zinc chromate.

M20J_Inspection PPE.htm

[B.T.Justice]

I think I’d avoid the trainer if it was me.  I flew these at ERAU when they had them in their fleet from around 1991 to 2001.  They were used for commercial complex training.  It was usually one lesson of stalls and slow flight with each student and then right to the pattern for practice work.  High gear usage, and lots of hard landings - you had to touchdown within 50 feet of your designated point...with a student with around 100 hours total time flying a Mooney...YIKES!   Riddle did a great job maintaining them, but the airplanes were really used up after 10 years of this routine.  This is also the M20J ATS which was a stripper model, which was available to flight schools from 1989 to 1992 or so.  

Edited September 2, 2020 by B.T.Justice

[carusoam]

Welcome aboard BTJ.

Interesting historical first post...

100 hours is what many MSer’s have prior to going Mooney...

And a few who have started their training in Mooneys...

 

Technically the AT is used for training... but compared to the C172 it surely isn’t THAT kind of primary trainer...

See if that clears up the next few posts that will arrive... 

Best regards,

-a-

[tcope]

Thanks for all the input. The more information I get, the more I realize that a cheaper airplane is not necessarily the least expensive. I first got interested in a Mooney when a friend had a 1964 M20E for sale for $20K. The more I researched the more my budget increased. Last week I was looking at $65k aircraft and then $80K and now over $100K. 
 

Does any know of someone who can do a prebuy inspection in St Louis, MO?

[wcb]

On 8/20/2020 at 9:23 PM, carusoam said:

 

I like the new Ovations...

That’s my thoughts...

 

I like the new Acclaims I think just a tiny bit better than the new Ovations.....

[gsxrpilot]

4 hours ago, tcope said:

Thanks for all the input. The more information I get, the more I realize that a cheaper airplane is not necessarily the least expensive. I first got interested in a Mooney when a friend had a 1964 M20E for sale for $20K. The more I researched the more my budget increased. Last week I was looking at $65k aircraft and then $80K and now over $100K. 

It's good that you're thinking this all through before buying the airplane. This type of education is much cheaper prior to the purchase than after.

I think most on this forum would agree that the purchase price is not where the cost of an airplane is. One, two, or three years down the road and that purchase price is pretty insignificant. In fact, the cheaper the initial purchase price, the more expensive the airplane is to own. That is within the model range. So for example a $65K M20J will likely cost a lot more than a $100K M20J within the first few years.

For $85K - I'd be looking for a really nice F.
For $65K - I'd be looking for a nice E.

An M20J with an asking price of less than $100K, I'd want a very thorough pre-buy to answer the question of, "what's wrong with it?"

One thing you might think of doing prior to a pre-buy inspection, is to get the log books evaluated by an expert. You can get Savvy to do that or I'd recommend Laura at SWTA. She's a pilot and an A&P and married to an A&P/IA. She and her husband, JD, work almost exclusively on Mooneys. Send her electronic copies of all the logs and I think, $250, and you'll get back a VERY detailed picture of that airplane since new. Several people on this forum have saved themselves the cost of a pre-buy by having Laura go through the log books.

[jetdriven]

⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️  This 

[larrynimmo]

When I shopped, I found a diamond in the rough....1981 M20J always hankered for 65k...with 1541 hours original engine.  Engine was on borrowed time from the beginning...I flew for 150 hours and changed it with a factory rebuilt Lycomming 38k, engine 830 monitor 3k, new hoses and mounts 1.5k new prop governor 2k, rebuild prop 2.5k, labor 4K, preventative maintenance on gear box ...including no hold back spring 2k, new garmin 650 13k...new ngt9000 8k, new aspen max 13k, garmin G5 3.2k, new starter .5k, new click .3k, new interior plastic parts and carpet walls and floor and repaint all cabin steel frame 4K..sunspot landing/taxi .2k new Led /nav & strobe 2k. New windshield 2k...Rosen visors .5k...tempest fine wire plugs .8k

my point is that I may have paid 65k for a nice low hour plane, but I spent close to 100k making it the kind of plane I wanted. And yet, I still have original seats, original paint (although it looks good)  I haven’t resealed the tanks, still need to repaint Steel pushrods every annual ( progressive maintenance) and of course regular wear items like tires, brakes, oil changes, yearly annual expenses.

the good news is that I darn near have a new plane with a tremendous IFR platform. I’m debating purchasing the amaafe seatbelts

[ArtVandelay]

With just a few edits I could have written Larry’s post above.
But I wasn’t surprised, I understood what I was getting into.

[ZuluZulu]

On 9/4/2020 at 3:50 AM, larrynimmo said:

When I shopped, I found a diamond in the rough....1981 M20J always hankered for 65k...with 1541 hours original engine.  Engine was on borrowed time from the beginning...I flew for 150 hours and changed it with a factory rebuilt Lycomming 38k, engine 830 monitor 3k, new hoses and mounts 1.5k new prop governor 2k, rebuild prop 2.5k, labor 4K, preventative maintenance on gear box ...including no hold back spring 2k, new garmin 650 13k...new ngt9000 8k, new aspen max 13k, garmin G5 3.2k, new starter .5k, new click .3k, new interior plastic parts and carpet walls and floor and repaint all cabin steel frame 4K..sunspot landing/taxi .2k new Led /nav & strobe 2k. New windshield 2k...Rosen visors .5k...tempest fine wire plugs .8k

my point is that I may have paid 65k for a nice low hour plane, but I spent close to 100k making it the kind of plane I wanted. And yet, I still have original seats, original paint (although it looks good)  I haven’t resealed the tanks, still need to repaint Steel pushrods every annual ( progressive maintenance) and of course regular wear items like tires, brakes, oil changes, yearly annual expenses.

the good news is that I darn near have a new plane with a tremendous IFR platform. I’m debating purchasing the amaafe seatbelts

Reminds me of this listing.  1378 SNEW in 1979!

[Missile=Awesome]

I didn’t know what a DerEcho (pronounced daratio) was until one hit Cedar Rapids, IA on August 10th.  Sustained winds over 80MPH for over 30 minutes with peak gusts of over 110mph.  Needless to say our city was decimated.  You hear about it on the nightly news?  I bet not.  I work from home and losing power for two weeks is not good.  We sustained over $22k in roof/siding damage.  We were lucky.  Over a thousand structures were uninhabitable.  Millions of acres of crops destroyed or damaged.  Iowa is corn.  Corn is Iowa.  Derecho’s and corn stalks don’t mix.  Cedar Rapids lost between 40-60% of our trees.  Tree’s stacked by the street and removal are ongoing a month post storm.  ALL High schools can NOT be utilized due to damage. Not looking for pity.  Merely trying to communicate the extent of the damage/loss/mental anguish this has caused in lock step with a crushing sustained impact from a micro-organism...

Like Blue Highway I am not in the mood for storm jokes...

At least it’s overcast and raining...so we have got that going for us on ur tarped roofs.

[tcope]

I looked at an aircraft that looks in good shape everywhere, except the landing gear has some chipped paint and what looks like surface rust. Is that something that would stop you from considering proceeding with a pre-buy inspection?

 

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by tcope

[Rwsavory]

33 minutes ago, tcope said:

I looked at an aircraft that looks in good shape everywhere, except the landing gear has some chipped paint and what looks like surface rust. Is that something that would stop you from considering proceeding with a pre-buy inspection?

 

 

No. It’s not an airworthiness item, and it’s easily remedied.  You might want to check the nose gear for dents while you're at it, but a decent PPI should cover that.