Why not buy a Bravo?

[Schllc]

I have about 600 hours in mooneys, the vast majority in g1000 ovations and acclaims, and the rest in a k. 
I have never flown, or even flown in a bravo. 
before I bought my first ovation I was bombarded by an inordinate amount of “hangar talk” from everyone I told my intentions to, about mooneys being dangerous, hard to fly, hard to land, slippery  etc.   I didn’t really know this was inaccurate, but knew I loved the way they looked, and wanted the speed for my mission.

five years later I now know the “hangar talk’, was all from people who heard something from someone who knew someone, and not from anyone who had any real experience.  

I currently own a very late model acclaim and want to transition to a twin, but do not want to sell my new plane until I have located, and configured to my liking, a more modestly priced older model.

I have narrowed this down to a J or a Bravo, and I’m leaning towards the Bravo, primarily because I fear I will be disappointed by the performance and handling of a 200hp engine when I am so accustomed to the big continentals. (Yes, I realize the radically different planes these two selections are)

i will probably put a glass panel, and a modern autopilot, I just want to find good paint, good engine and good history, the rest I am willing to bring to my standard. i am also ok to a point, with having a little more in it than it’s worth, if it’s safe, and exactly what I want. 

i currently have my eye on a few that are late 80’s early 90’s, these selections are mostly because I can get them in a price range that allows me to upgrade without spending 300k.  i watch the market and I see that bravos really seem to languish, and am really interested to know the real reason, not the anecdotal, “hangar talk” reasons.

if there is anyone in south florida that has one, I’d be happy to trade a flight in my ultra for one in your bravo!

 

 

[drstephensugiono]

I have about 600 hours in mooneys, the vast majority in g1000 ovations and acclaims, and the rest in a k. 
I have never flown, or even flown in a bravo. 
before I bought my first ovation I was bombarded by an inordinate amount of “hangar talk” from everyone I told my intentions to, about mooneys being dangerous, hard to fly, hard to land, slippery  etc.   I didn’t really know this was inaccurate, but knew I loved the way they looked, and wanted the speed for my mission.
five years later I now know the “hangar talk’, was all from people who heard something from someone who knew someone, and not from anyone who had any real experience.  
I currently own a very late model acclaim and want to transition to a twin, but do not want to sell my new plane until I have located, and configured to my liking, a more modestly priced older model.
I have narrowed this down to a J or a Bravo, and I’m leaning towards the Bravo, primarily because I fear I will be disappointed by the performance and handling of a 200hp engine when I am so accustomed to the big continentals. (Yes, I realize the radically different planes these two selections are)
i will probably put a glass panel, and a modern autopilot, I just want to find good paint, good engine and good history, the rest I am willing to bring to my standard. i am also ok to a point, with having a little more in it than it’s worth, if it’s safe, and exactly what I want. 

i currently have my eye on a few that are late 80’s early 90’s, these selections are mostly because I can get them in a price range that allows me to upgrade without spending 300k.  i watch the market and I see that bravos really seem to languish, and am really interested to know the real reason, not the anecdotal, “hangar talk” reasons.
if there is anyone in south florida that has one, I’d be happy to trade a flight in my ultra for one in your bravo!
 
 

Sounds like a fair trade! I love my Bravo, had it for 26 years


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[irishpilot]

The plane is really a great XC plane. Range, useful load, fuel burn, speed, and equipment is all there.

Do I wish it had more legs, not really. Do I wish it went higher, nope. Do I wish it had a bit more useful load, yes. Not a lot of A&Ps are knowledgeable on the Bravo's engine, so finding one who had experience is important.

Bravo's are slippery, but they just take inflight planning; however, I rarely use my speed brakes. They are speed sensitive on landing. 5-10 knots fast will eat up runway. I really like the extra room in the long body Mooney.

I'd be curious what others think.

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[Niko182]

This here is what you really should be looking at.

 

[Schllc]

7 minutes ago, Niko182 said:

This here is what you really should be looking at.

How much experience do you have in a bravo?

have you ever owned one?

 

[Niko182]

4 minutes ago, Schllc said:

 

My experience is in the ovations mainly. You stated it was between a J and an M. I Think the S is a pretty good compromise between those 2 planes.

[Schllc]

If you know of one that is for sale for 100k I’d probably add it to the list. 
I haven’t seen one in that price range yet. 
i have several hundred hours in ovations as well, and agree, it’s an excellent platform, but they cost more than I plan to spend knowing what I’ll put into it after purchase. 

[exM20K]

I’ve flown both Acclaim and bravo but owned only Acclaim. Main differences:
*bravo is a little slower
•bravo is a little thirstier
*Acclaim runs smoother
*Acclaim runs LOP

Both power plants are hideously expensive. Not so with the 201.

Most bravo’s have a very tall panel.

Otherwise, they fly similarly

No idea why the bravos are perceived to be languishing on the market. Correctly priced planes should move. Maybe owners too fond of their birds.
-dan

[drstephensugiono]

If you know of one that is for sale for 100k I’d probably add it to the list. 

I haven’t seen one in that price range yet. 

i have several hundred hours in ovations as well, and agree, it’s an excellent platform, but they cost more than I plan to spend knowing what I’ll put into it after purchase. 

U can’t beat the Turbocharging!!! Love the capabilities of the Bravo, I would only trade it up to a turbine!

 

 

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[carusoam]

Something is getting lost in translation...

1) it’s all personal preference...

2) A TN’d long body is pretty much the top...

3) A TC’d Bravo is pretty close to an acclaim, at a lower cost of acquisition...

4) An Ovation is pretty close, except the missing turbo / altitude capabilities...

5) A J is no longer close and no longer turbo... but still a Mooney...

6) Hangar talk has a bit more meaning when you know your hangar friends...

7) Who better to discuss a variety of Mooneys with than MSers?

8) Do you prefer maximum flying performance or maximum budget performance? or Something in between?

9) Be aware that Bravos are a bit older than other Long Bodies...  if you see a low cost one, do your homework on what needs to be brought up to date...

10) How we’ll do you know your finances, and how willing are you to compromise on flight characteristics?
 

The word languish and Mooneys are not going together in the current market... Sure one can find a Mooney or two where price and value are a mis-match for various reasons....

Best regards,

-a-

[MooneyBe]

I was in the Bravo market for several months. I can tell you that although some languish, the 'good' ones are scooped up in <1 week. To your point, there are a lot of red/yellow flags to look for when diligencing a Bravo.. many of the ones that seem to sit (probably/possibly) have some of those flags when you get into the logs.

[Schllc]

8 minutes ago, MooneyBe said:

I was in the Bravo market for several months. I can tell you that although some languish, the 'good' ones are scooped up in <1 week. To your point, there are a lot of red/yellow flags to look for when diligencing a Bravo.. many of the ones that seem to sit (probably/possibly) have some of those flags when you get into the logs.

Aside from the typical and obvious things in logs like damage history or lapsed annuals, are there any things unique to bravos that should be scrutinized?

[carusoam]

There isn’t anything that stands out for such a well developed and constructed plane...

The Bravo is the second long body...

The Bravo is the second version of the TLS... where the engine got improvements to its cylinders...for their longevity.

So only the usual condition things need to be verified...  good PPI by a quality Mooney specific supplier...

How old, how many hours, who was doing the maintenance?

Are you familiar with aging turbo maintenance issues..?

How they age, how they wear, what a V-band is... that kind of thing...
 

The difficulty we encounter with long body mooneys... when they are new they cost 800amu....

if you need to buy big replacement parts after a low cost PPI.... You may surprise yourself...
 

Look up OH costs for the engine and prop to get a feeling for the cost of things... make sure the turbo is included in the costs you look up...

You may find FW forward OHs for big turbo engines and a new prop  to be closer to 100amu... than 50amu...
 

The Bravo is really cool for its single TC... compared to a pair of snails and ICs...

The complexity of the economics seems to increase significantly...

Best regards,

-a-

[MooneyBe]

I would recommend prior to pre-buy you have a Mooney professional review the logs. It will make the prebuy much more targeted and give you a relatively cheap sniff check of the plane before you go to the trouble of a deposit/P&S/PPI/escrow/etc. I used JD and Laura out of SW TX aviation and couldn't have been happier. For 0.2 AMU, you can have a detailed write up of every inspection, what's out of date, what's coming up, etc. They will point out things like an O2 bottle that needs replacing in 8 months (which wouldn't be obvious necessarily but can cost ~2.5k when you account for everything), or that the fuel tanks have never been treated (which means that you almost certainly will be the one to treat/seal them if you own the thing longer than a few years), or that there was a tiny print entry for an AD compliance with sudden prop stoppage (even though the seller didn't note any prop strike/stoppage as part of the posting). 

The specific cautions are long to list and highly dependent on the systems installed. But send the logs/review them yourself and things will start to emerge. There are also a few threads here on the topic of PPI cautions. One that perhaps is politically incorrect to note is the previous owner. Even when dealing with a broker, I insist on speaking to the owner to understand what kind of owner/operator they were/are (and owners before the current one if possible). Some owners treat their Bravos like a piece of old lawn equipment... others respect them and treat them like the extremely capable (but also temperamental) machine they are. You can tell within a couple minutes of speaking to someone what kind of owner they are.... 

[Schllc]

44 minutes ago, MooneyBe said:

I would recommend prior to pre-buy you have a Mooney professional review the logs. It will make the prebuy much more targeted and give you a relatively cheap sniff check of the plane before you go to the trouble of a deposit/P&S/PPI/escrow/etc. I used JD and Laura out of SW TX aviation and couldn't have been happier. For 0.2 AMU, you can have a detailed write up of every inspection, what's out of date, what's coming up, etc. They will point out things like an O2 bottle that needs replacing in 8 months (which wouldn't be obvious necessarily but can cost ~2.5k when you account for everything), or that the fuel tanks have never been treated (which means that you almost certainly will be the one to treat/seal them if you own the thing longer than a few years), or that there was a tiny print entry for an AD compliance with sudden prop stoppage (even though the seller didn't note any prop strike/stoppage as part of the posting). 

The specific cautions are long to list and highly dependent on the systems installed. But send the logs/review them yourself and things will start to emerge. There are also a few threads here on the topic of PPI cautions. One that perhaps is politically incorrect to note is the previous owner. Even when dealing with a broker, I insist on speaking to the owner to understand what kind of owner/operator they were/are (and owners before the current one if possible). Some owners treat their Bravos like a piece of old lawn equipment... others respect them and treat them like the extremely capable (but also temperamental) machine they are. You can tell within a couple minutes of speaking to someone what kind of owner they are.... 

That’s a winning suggestion. Will send logs.  That will be the best couple hundred bucks I could ever spend. 

[kortopates]

The Bravo is the most undervalued plane in the fleet. Once a turbo pilot, its really hard to go back to an NA plane. And only a turbo pilot understands they're flown very differently and thus I'd expect you'll be very dissatisfied to go back to 200 hp NA Mooney. And coming from an Acclaim, it makes more sense for you to stick with a longbody if you can. Go Bravo - (even though I much prefer the 252/Encore for its efficiency).

[drstephensugiono]

The Bravo is the most undervalued plane in the fleet. Once a turbo pilot, its really hard to go back to an NA plane. And only a turbo pilot understands they're flown very differently and thus I'd expect you'll be very dissatisfied to go back to 200 hp NA Mooney. And coming from an Acclaim, it makes more sense for you to stick with a longbody if you can. Go Bravo - (even though I much prefer the 252/Encore for its efficiency).

That’s like going back from my Ferrari/Lamborghini to a corvette!


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[carusoam]

Keep in mind,

There are individual airplanes that are in the market that look good in pictures that may have a slightly checkered past...
 

There is a Bravo that shows up every now and then that had some major surgery on its wing...

It showed up again for sale yesterday...

This may be important if you are a no Ndh kind of guy...
 

Reading logs is a great idea before sending planes for PPIs... search of N numbers is always interesting...

 

So...

To answer the main question of this thread...

There are no reasons to not buy a bravo...  Who thought that was a good title name?

There are plenty of good reasons to buy a Bravo...

Buying the right Bravo isn’t that hard...

There are plenty of reasons to not buy the wrong Bravo...

PP thoughts only, a big fan of LBs...

Go Mooney, Bravo!
 

Best regards,

-a-

[FoxMike]

Here are a few thoughts about the Bravo.  Bravo is slower than the Acclaim and more nose heavy.  The Lycoming engine is heavy but it has a wet head.  The wet head pours oil over the exhaust valve guide to cool the guide and valve.  The wet head came about in the late 50s.  The Aero Commanders and Beech Queenair were trying to do pressurization and the piston engines were not up to the task.  Lycoming found the engines could be a bit more serviceable by using the wet head.  Beech Dukes were another example.  

So the Bravo cylinders make TBO but the exhaust systems are troublesome.  The harder you run the engine the more you need to repair cracks in the exhaust. The other large item with the Bravo is the crankshaft.  An AD note condemns all the cranks built around the late nineties and early 2000s.  Amazingly some engines turn up with the condemned cranks.  Good pre buys eliminate the problem.   

A trick that will lower the repair bills of either airplane is to grab the throttle a pull it back.  Operating at 65-70% power reduces the BTUs the engine has to deal with and service life is much better.  Keep in mind only 30% of the BTUs the gasoline produces turns the prop.  All the rest is waste and only causes engine wear and other problems.  The other end of the problem is the higher you fly the bigger a standard cubic foot of air becomes.  You need a huge volume of air at altitude to get the same amount of cooling that a smaller volume of air near sea level provides. Because of this the marginal cost of getting the last few knots the salesman promised rises exponentially.

To sum up the Lycoming seems to be doing a better job of cooling the exhaust valves so the cylinders do better.  Continental does not seem interested in getting their engines to TBO on one set of cylinders. 

[carusoam]

Great Bravo insight, FM!

Thanks for sharing the details.

Best regards,

-a-

[Bravoman]

1 hour ago, FoxMike said:

Here are a few thoughts about the Bravo.  Bravo is slower than the Acclaim and more nose heavy.  The Lycoming engine is heavy but it has a wet head.  The wet head pours oil over the exhaust valve guide to cool the guide and valve.  The wet head came about in the late 50s.  The Aero Commanders and Beech Queenair were trying to do pressurization and the piston engines were not up to the task.  Lycoming found the engines could be a bit more serviceable by using the wet head.  Beech Dukes were another example.  

So the Bravo cylinders make TBO but the exhaust systems are troublesome.  The harder you run the engine the more you need to repair cracks in the exhaust. The other large item with the Bravo is the crankshaft.  An AD note condemns all the cranks built around the late nineties and early 2000s.  Amazingly some engines turn up with the condemned cranks.  Good pre buys eliminate the problem.   

A trick that will lower the repair bills of either airplane is to grab the throttle a pull it back.  Operating at 65-70% power reduces the BTUs the engine has to deal with and service life is much better.  Keep in mind only 30% of the BTUs the gasoline produces turns the prop.  All the rest is waste and only causes engine wear and other problems.  The other end of the problem is the higher you fly the bigger a standard cubic foot of air becomes.  You need a huge volume of air at altitude to get the same amount of cooling that a smaller volume of air near sea level provides. Because of this the marginal cost of getting the last few knots the salesman promised rises exponentially.

To sum up the Lycoming seems to be doing a better job of cooling the exhaust valves so the cylinders do better.  Continental does not seem interested in getting their engines to TBO on one set of cylinders. 

Next time I fly I’ll have to check out out your power setting suggestion. I typically cruise at 29/24 which yields around 77%. What is the setting that yields 65-70%, 26 or 27/24? You pull the mixture back to ~1500 TIT for that setting or do something different?

[FoxMike]

My power charts are out in the hangar but I use27/2200 when I am out chasing a hamburger.  28/2250 or 2300 when I am going somewhere.

[slowflyin]

I typically run 29/24 with all cylinders under 375-380.   Mostly closer to the 360s.  I believe these cylinder head temps indicate the engine isn’t be subjected to undo stress. “Use not abuse”.  
TIT is a different story.  I like the TIT under 1600.  I’ll admit I’m still formulating my own opinion regarding TIT limits.  Seems 1650 was the revised limit from Mooney. Some say 1625, some 1600, some 1575 ......Everyone, including myself, has a personal limit.   However, I’ve yet to here from a Bravo driver that hasn’t had to do exhaust work.   Most say mid-time.  I’d love to hear from somebody who ran a particular limit and made it to TBO without exhaust work.  Don Kaye probably has the most experience.  He’s been driving the same Bravo for twenty + years and several engines.   He too has a personal limit but I think he’s had exhaust work mid time on his engines as well.  Maybe he can chime in.   
1600 is tough if I run LOP.   Engine runs fine at 14-14.5 GPH on the lean side but the TIT creeps closer to 1620.  Keeping under 1600 requires even leaner ops.  Still experimenting with LOP.  Often I’ll go LOP during long descents. 
All that being said, the Bravo is a fantastic traveling machine!  I have no buyers remorse! 

[aviatoreb]

3 hours ago, FoxMike said:

To sum up the Lycoming seems to be doing a better job of cooling the exhaust valves so the cylinders do better.  Continental does not seem interested in getting their engines to TBO on one set of cylinders. 

That seems quite true.  My continental certainly needed cylinders at around the proverbial mid time mark.  Although I was not operating it for the first 750 hours.  I hear the valves were poorly machined from the factory from that era.  I hear that having the valves re-machined (lapped) when new before ever installing them is the key to a full tbo run on cylinders for a continental.  That from the deans of continentals at beech talk the guys who do those lop seminars.  I don't know what is the truth but at my top I did have my valves lapped by a quality shop.  When I do my full overhaul I will have new cylinders again remachined even when new before installing, and hope for the best.

Even with a top in the equation, my continental full overhaul plus the cost of a full top approaches the greater cost of a major overhaul of a lycoming bravo engine.  I don't think then the cost of overhaul or the presumed cost of no top or the cost of a top should be a deciding factor.   I have ridden in two different bravos and they are beautiful machines.  That's the reason to go bravo, and taking a peek at controller, I have no idea why, but the acquisition cost of a relatively modern bravo seems lower than it should be!

[Niko182]

2 hours ago, slowflyin said:

I typically run 29/24 with all cylinders under 375-380.   Mostly closer to the 360s.  I believe these cylinder head temps indicate the engine isn’t be subjected to undo stress. “Use not abuse”.  
TIT is a different story.  I like the TIT under 1600.  I’ll admit I’m still formulating my own opinion regarding TIT limits.  Seems 1650 was the revised limit from Mooney. Some say 1625, some 1600, some 1575 ......Everyone, including myself, has a personal limit.   However, I’ve yet to here from a Bravo driver that hasn’t had to do exhaust work.   Most say mid-time.  I’d love to hear from somebody who ran a particular limit and made it to TBO without exhaust work.  Don Kaye probably has the most experience.  He’s been driving the same Bravo for twenty + years and several engines.   He too has a personal limit but I think he’s had exhaust work mid time on his engines as well.  Maybe he can chime in.   
1600 is tough if I run LOP.   Engine runs fine at 14-14.5 GPH on the lean side but the TIT creeps closer to 1620.  Keeping under 1600 requires even leaner ops.  Still experimenting with LOP.  Often I’ll go LOP during long descents. 
All that being said, the Bravo is a fantastic traveling machine!  I have no buyers remorse! 

Curious if surefly would benifit the bravo LOP wise like it did @aviatoreb Rocket. The bravo seems limited LOP wise at higher power due to TIT. And with Eriks Pirep of the surefly bringing the TIT down, do you think you'd be able to operate the bravo like the TAT setups, where you just go to a higher seting and just pull the mixture back to limit the power like on a TAT Bo setup? The bravo is on the approved list applicable to surefly.