M20J annual cost?

[Adi]

Hello friends,

My 1983 M20J is finishing up its second annual since it's been in my possession.

The first annual cost me $8,900.

This year's annual will end up costing me $11,000. This includes about $1500 worth of fixing surface corrosion in rudder/elevator push/pull rods, landing gear tubular structures, landing gear retract rod. I rejected (for now) $1500 worth of firewall-forward fuel/oil hoses squawked as "stiff" and recommended to be replaced with fireproofed ones, as well as $1500 worth of overhauling a leaky prop governor. The base annual is $3510. The rest is a long list of smallish items that add up.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area which makes everything slightly more expensive, but this seems a bit crazy to me. I'm especially surprised to discover $10,000 worth of airplane "breaking" over the course of a year. I thought after the first annual where I'd be picking up some slack for deferred maintenance from the previous owner, the second annual would be just a bunch of minor things.

I'm curious what other folks' experiences are. Anybody else paying ~10% of the value of the airplane every year in annual maintenance?

BTW, I have a detailed list of squawks from the maintenance shop. I hesitate to post it publicly for anyone on the internet to see, but happy to share with anyone in private messages if you think you can help me understand what is going on - are the shops over-squawking, or is it just the high base rate ($135/hr).

Adi

[jetdriven]

Our shop uses the Mooney eight page annual checklist and the base annual cost is around 26 hours of labor. It actually takes 30-32 hours to do it all. Repairs are extra of course, and the first year sometimes the repairs are  quite a bit. But I got a lot of customers whose previous bills were 1795 base annual, but the log entry says FAR part 43 appendix D annual, not “Mooney checklist annual” and they did not get the checklist which has eight pages and therefore it was more of a jack it up grease it and then do repairs annual which is not really what you want. Then you see that the oil change, the log entries, checking out the landing gear preload, elt inspection, gas cap o-rings, brake pads and wheel bearings, all those things were extra and when it’s all said and done it’s three grand.
Plus the repairs. So you still pay three grand for the annual, you just didn’t get the 8 Page mooney checklist items  with that. If they aren’t using the mooney  100 hour/annual checklist find another shop.

everyone  is different, but anyway.

Also, if your hoses are teflon, they are supposed to be replaced on condition, no life limit. With the last Mooney  I had in the shop had homemade hoses with no data tags that were rubber hoses with  screwed on  ends and they were 11 years old, and the book says change  non-Teflon  hoses at seven years. So I don’t know….research what hoses you have and go from there.  Ac43.13 specifically says the Teflon hoses take a permanent set in operation and the stiffness really does not have any bearing on their serviceability. Read the section carefully and then see what hoses you have and go from there. 
that’s how we do things In the shop here at RPM Aircratt Service, Gaithersburg MD. 

[KSMooniac]

$3500 for base annual is really high IMO, but that is likely normal for CA, sorry. A full set of modern hoses for $1500 sounds right, especially if installed for that price. Probably a deal out there... I bought my teflon hoses for $1400 6 years ago, and installed them myself. $1500 for a governor overhaul with R&R is fine IMO, but the leak might be just a gasket and not require any overhaul. Some shops will try to overhaul anything that comes off the plane.

Fixing corrosion... Hard to say without detailed pics. Did you take it to a "jet center" or certified repair station? If so, don't do that... They'll hit you for every little thing that doesn't look new.

I suspect there was a lot of deferred maintenance and you took it to the picky shop and that is an expensive combo. There is a spectrum between airworthy and new, and a lot of places will try to get you to pay for new. If you're not confident you can discern what is what, joining Savvy Aviation might be a good option to help.

Sent from my LM-V405 using Tapatalk

[RobertGary1]

Eventually you'll decide its safer and cheaper to wrench yourself. Now I pay around $300 flat fee for annual and I do all the wrenching.

 

-Robert

[PT20J]

I do all the opening, closing, and servicing myself. My IA charges $750 for the inspection. I don’t defer any maintenance to the inspection. If something is found that needs fixing at annual (rare) he charges $95/hour (he really should raise his rates).

[DCarlton]

2 hours ago, Adi said:

Hello friends,

My 1983 M20J is finishing up its second annual since it's been in my possession.

The first annual cost me $8,900.

This year's annual will end up costing me $11,000. This includes about $1500 worth of fixing surface corrosion in rudder/elevator push/pull rods, landing gear tubular structures, landing gear retract rod. I rejected (for now) $1500 worth of firewall-forward fuel/oil hoses squawked as "stiff" and recommended to be replaced with fireproofed ones, as well as $1500 worth of overhauling a leaky prop governor. The base annual is $3510. The rest is a long list of smallish items that add up.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area which makes everything slightly more expensive, but this seems a bit crazy to me. I'm especially surprised to discover $10,000 worth of airplane "breaking" over the course of a year. I thought after the first annual where I'd be picking up some slack for deferred maintenance from the previous owner, the second annual would be just a bunch of minor things.

I'm curious what other folks' experiences are. Anybody else paying ~10% of the value of the airplane every year in annual maintenance?

BTW, I have a detailed list of squawks from the maintenance shop. I hesitate to post it publicly for anyone on the internet to see, but happy to share with anyone in private messages if you think you can help me understand what is going on - are the shops over-squawking, or is it just the high base rate ($135/hr).

Adi

I'm not a mechanic but I live along the coast in Southern CA.  I've been looking at surface corrosion on my landing gear for years.  I'd like to dress it up at some point, tear down the gear and have it re-coated, but I'm not worried about it from a safety perspective.  Same goes for the aft sections of the push pull tubes.  I can find some areas with surface corrosion but it hasn't made it to the top of the priority list and it's not a concern; although I'd like to eventually have an MSC remove and repaint them.  I last had the plane painted about 10 years ago.  IMO, keeping these old planes safely in the air is a balancing act.  It's costly to make them new.  To answer your question, I've only spent that much when I had the plane painted, when I overhauled the engine, and when I upgraded the avionics.  My annuals have all been less than $4K.  I've owned the plane for 17 years.  It would be interesting to see some pics of your landing gear.  Again I'm not a mechanic.  Maybe you'll catch up if you stay with the same shop. 

Edited August 28, 2021 by DCarlton

[jaylw314]

My IA and shop charge a flat fee of $1700 for an annual inspection on a Mooney.  This doesn't include the parts and labor for all the typical and required maintenance stuff (oil change, spark plugs, wheel bearings, etc), but a non-squawk annual would probably cost me around $2000 or so.  Obviously, there usually are a bunch of small and occasionally big squawks, but in 5 years, the only annual more than $3000 was when I asked him to install LED nav lighting during the annual last year.  Of course, I've had a couple big-ticket items between annuals, so the annual costs themselves doesn't actually amount to much in terms of my overall maintenance costs.

TL;DR -- the annual cost should be reasonably modest, but if you add the stuff you want fixed it can be very, very expensive.

[ArtVandelay]

It’s hard to say without seeing the list:
My first was annual was $6500, but I upgraded to LEDs, replaced all fluid hoses including brake lines. I declined 1 airworthy item (manufacturer plate was painted) they wanted an hour to fix, they ended up fixing it for free.
I replaced all my glass at another annual and fixed some hangar rash, that’s another $6000 annual.

If you PM me the list I can take a look at it. I have had my 78J for 7 years and went through an engine&prop overhaul, I’m picky, so I usually don’t let things go very long without fixing but I don’t like fixing things just because either.

[ArtVandelay]

I agree with most of the items, except propeller overhaul (in Canada you would not have a choice), just dress the blades, but would count on overhauling it if or when you overhaul the engine.
I would not pay them to clean the plane, you can and should do that. I would replace the hoses, only because a failure would catastrophic and they can deteriorate from the inside. Some of the little things (like cable tying the wiring you could have done), but since they’re small items and you may not have experience I would just let them do it.
Can’t comment on the corrosion, but since it didn’t sound superficial I would probably fix it. You could take pictures and post them, others with more expertise can comment.
I would learn how to change your oil (you’re allowed to do this), that way you can periodically inspect the engine yourself.

[Guest]

8 hours ago, RobertGary1 said:

Eventually you'll decide its safer and cheaper to wrench yourself. Now I pay around $300 flat fee for annual and I do all the wrenching.

 

-Robert

Not everyone wants to or are capable of doing aircraft maintenance.  I’ve got lots of customers who tell me that they’re better off working at their job, while I do my job.

Clarence

[ArtVandelay]

BTW, I see they repaired cracked baffling for a 2nd time, this can indicate your engine is vibrating too much which can be caused by prop imbalance or bad engine mounts. I would check and correct the former and if that’s not the problem, consider the latter.
And replace your camlocs with skybolt versions that have wider lips and won’t pull through (another thing that can be caused by unbalanced engines):




They sold you a Goodyear which is pricey, I use Air Hawks, that are $140 cheaper and wear very well.

[anthonydesmet]

Adi, yes - welcome to ownership year number 2.  Stepping back and looking at your first two years more holistically, who did your pre-purchase, was it thorough, what condition was the plane in at that time and did you take care of a lot of squawks on the list at purchase? Are the things at this annual all surprises or did you know most of them were coming?  Surprises at annual should be minimal if an owner is proactive throughout the year and you had a thorough pre-buy.

 Looking back at my first year of ownership I took care of a lot of things throughout that first year at each 25 hour oil change and then at my first annual a few more i had planned on throughout the year.  My first annual was around 6300 and if I added up the year it came to about 9500.  

Eventually you will find once you get the plane to your standards and you do pro active maintenance throughout the year your annual cost will go down and taper off.  I spend about 3500 at each annual now. But again if i add things up during the year outside my oil changes I spend about 6000.  As an example last week I had fuel nozzles cleaned, fuel injection tuned and new nozzle gaskets…so add another 1 AMU to the year……it’s an airplane, things are going to break.

Don’t worry, things will eventually taper off.  I tell everyone that asks me, “what’s it like owning an airplane?”  I tell them, anyone can buy an airplane, however ‘owning’ an airplane isn’t for the faint of heart…….

[toto]

11 hours ago, Adi said:

I'm curious what other folks' experiences are. Anybody else paying ~10% of the value of the airplane every year in annual maintenance?

To echo what PT said above, I think it's good to schedule maintenance as necessary during the year, and avoid lumping maintenance into the inspection interval. If the inspection really is an inspection, and you're on top of regular maintenance, the number of "gotchas" at annual time should be minimal, and limited to things that would be really hard to identify in a preflight. 

If an annual inspection is also a "do all of the maintenance for the year," then it's going to seem high - but should be compared against annual maintenance costs, and not just against annual inspection costs. 

The $3500 base annual seems insanely high to me. Here in the midwest, a $1750-1800 base inspection is pretty standard for a J model, and if you have no repairs, you can get away with a total around $2000 to $2500 including consumables. 

All of that being said, a new-to-you airplane always has some surprises. Every mechanic focuses on different things, and even if the plane passed its previous annual with flying colors, your new mechanic will find things wrong with it. A 10% annual the first time around seems high but not impossibly high. It's the second 10% annual that would have me looking elsewhere. My advice would be to try a different shop for #3. 

[Jerry 5TJ]

11 hours ago, Adi said:

Anybody else paying ~10% of the value of the airplane every year in annual maintenance?

A new M20J if available would cost what, $850,000?  Probably more.

So your annual cost is about 1% of that value, plus the airplane you are maintaining is 40 years old.  

1% of replacement cost seems a reasonable maintenance rate for a mechanically-complex capital investment that is well into its mid-life cycle.  Actually, I think it seems low.     

[PT20J]

Some good points in this thread. As a couple of us pointed out, the actual inspection is not that expensive. But there are a lot of servicing items that are typically done at annual time that add to the cost. And, if you have a list of squawks (annual inspection time can be a good time to fix some because the airplane is in the shop and opened up) that will add to the cost. The first annual is usually expensive because the previous owner may have deferred maintenance items in anticipation of selling the airplane.

If you have the skills and enjoy working on the airplane, you can do a lot of things yourself. But many would prefer to pay a maintainer. Also, I’m sure @M20Doc or any working maintainer will have lots of horror stories of owner performed maintenance that was improperly done.

@Jerry 5TJ makes a good point. Richard Collins used to write that the cost of maintaining a used airplane was more tied to the cost of a new airplane than a used one. 

Skip

[Shadrach]

18 hours ago, Adi said:

Hello friends,

My 1983 M20J is finishing up its second annual since it's been in my possession.

The first annual cost me $8,900.

This year's annual will end up costing me $11,000. This includes about $1500 worth of fixing surface corrosion in rudder/elevator push/pull rods, landing gear tubular structures, landing gear retract rod. I rejected (for now) $1500 worth of firewall-forward fuel/oil hoses squawked as "stiff" and recommended to be replaced with fireproofed ones, as well as $1500 worth of overhauling a leaky prop governor. The base annual is $3510. The rest is a long list of smallish items that add up.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area which makes everything slightly more expensive, but this seems a bit crazy to me. I'm especially surprised to discover $10,000 worth of airplane "breaking" over the course of a year. I thought after the first annual where I'd be picking up some slack for deferred maintenance from the previous owner, the second annual would be just a bunch of minor things.

I'm curious what other folks' experiences are. Anybody else paying ~10% of the value of the airplane every year in annual maintenance?

BTW, I have a detailed list of squawks from the maintenance shop. I hesitate to post it publicly for anyone on the internet to see, but happy to share with anyone in private messages if you think you can help me understand what is going on - are the shops over-squawking, or is it just the high base rate ($135/hr).

Adi

Like others here, I jack, open and close the aircraft for annual. Any maintenance that my IA is comfortable with me doing, I do (time permitting).  My mechanic does log and AD research before physical inspection. When he shows up. He arrives to an open aircraft on jacks that is ready for inspection. I have endured many high 4 and 5 figure annuals at repair stations over the years. I stopped because those experiences offered a lousy return on safety for the money spent. One of the shops I used did maintenance for a part 135 charter operation. I felt sore afterwords. I did get a new AD compliance list in a nicer binder with tabs. They didn’t find any AD compliance issues, they just really excelled at putting together paperwork. I still have it…It’s a beautiful AD compliance list…Probably one of the best. That was $8700 annual in 2005…the only actual maintenance done was the installation of a OH’d LASAR nose truss. I still have large maintenance bills some years but I am getting a lot more return on safety and systems knowledge for the dollars spent. I have done roughly 12 or so owner assist annuals now. There is no part of my bird that I’ve not seen. It was amazing to me to see some of the shoddy work that was performed on my plane. Nothing dangerous, just lousy detail. Poor wire routing, broken tabs and bosses. Improper length fasteners (I had to put a blind rivet on the pilots side fuselage were some D-bag put #10 sheet metal screw through the skin). I also found that repair stations will selectively ignore items they don’t want to deal with. The vac hoses behind my panel made it through two annuals that were just south of $10K despite being dry rotted like tree bark. When I checked the logs the were something like 23 years old. Why? Because it’s a $hit job that no one wants to do (I know it’s a shit job because I personally replace them every 5-7 years).

Did the same facility do last years annual? I’d be curious how landing gear that was airworthy last year now requires $1500 worth of corrosion mitigation.

Not everyone has the aptitude or time to participate in there own maintenance. There are years when I don’t have time. In those cases I have two trusted resources I would use. It took the better part of a decade to establish that trust. There are great shops and indie IAs out there. Many of them post here. Find an experienced owner in your area and get a recommendation. 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Shadrach

[jaylw314]

1 hour ago, Shadrach said:

Like others here, I jack, open and close the aircraft for annual. Any maintenance that my IA is comfortable with me doing, I do (time permitting).  My mechanic does log and AD research before physical inspection. When he shows up. He arrives to an open aircraft on jacks that is ready for inspection. I have endured many 4 and 5 figure annuals at repair stations over the years...

 

Wait a minute, ANY work in aviation is a 4 figure cost!! 

[Shadrach]

3 hours ago, jaylw314 said:

Wait a minute, ANY work in aviation is a 4 figure cost!! 

Edited for clarity!

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Shadrach said:

Like others here, I jack, open and close the aircraft for annual. Any maintenance that my IA is comfortable with me doing, I do (time permitting).  My mechanic does log and AD research before physical inspection. When he shows up. He arrives to an open aircraft on jacks that is ready for inspection. I have endured many high 4 and 5 figure annuals at repair stations over the years. I stopped because those experiences offered a lousy return on safety for the money spent. One of the shops did info use maintenance for a part 135 charter operation. I felt sore afterwords. I did get a new AD compliance list in a nicer binder with tabs. They didn’t find any AD compliance issues, they just really excelled at putting together paperwork. I still have it…It’s a beautiful AD compliance list…Probably one of the best. That was $8700 annual in 2005…the only actual maintenance done was the installation of a OH’d LASAR nose truss. I still have large maintenance bills some years but I am getting a lot more return on safety and systems knowledge for the dollars spent. I have done roughly 12 or so owner assist annuals now. There is no part of my bird that I’ve not seen. It was amazing to me to see some of the shoddy work that was performed on my plane. Nothing dangerous, just lousy detail. Poor wire routing, broken tabs and bosses. Improper length fasteners (I had to put a blind rivet on the pilots side fuselage were some D-bag put #10 sheet metal screw through the skin). I also found that repair stations will selectively ignore items they don’t want to deal with. The vac hoses behind my panel made it through two annuals that were just south of $10K despite being dry rotted like tree bark. When I checked the logs the were something like 23 years old. Why? Because it’s a $hit job that no one wants to do (I know it’s a shit job because I personally replace them every 5-7 years).

Did the same facility do last years annual? I’d be curious how landing gear that was airworthy last year now requires $1500 worth of corrosion mitigation.

Not everyone has the aptitude or time to participate in there own maintenance. There are years when I don’t have time. In those cases I have two trusted resources I would use. It took the better part of a decade to establish that trust. There are great shops and indie IAs out there. Many of them post here. Find an experienced owner in your area and get a recommendation. 

 

How does he run up and perform a hot cylinder compression check when the plane is on jacks when he arrives?  When he signs out the plane as being Airworthy does he leave you to reassemble the plane.  If yes, the airplane wasn’t Airworthy when he signed it out.

Not trying to be difficult, just dying to understand.  In Canada I could do that it this way as we never have to sign the plane as being airworthy, we sign attesting the the inspection and the work meeting standards.

Clarence

[Guest]

4 hours ago, PT20J said:

Some good points in this thread. As a couple of us pointed out, the actual inspection is not that expensive. But there are a lot of servicing items that are typically done at annual time that add to the cost. And, if you have a list of squawks (annual inspection time can be a good time to fix some because the airplane is in the shop and opened up) that will add to the cost. The first annual is usually expensive because the previous owner may have deferred maintenance items in anticipation of selling the airplane.

If you have the skills and enjoy working on the airplane, you can do a lot of things yourself. But many would prefer to pay a maintainer. Also, I’m sure @M20Doc or any working maintainer will have lots of horror stories of owner performed maintenance that was improperly done.

@Jerry 5TJ makes a good point. Richard Collins used to write that the cost of maintaining a used airplane was more tied to the cost of a new airplane than a used one. 

Skip

I’ve got just as many horrors coming from other shops.  We finished a 100 hour yesterday on an Ovation four months out of annual by a big US shop.  The shock discs were original and so compressed that they never did expand fully after a week on jacks, in fact they were so compressed that the top washers on both main gears had rotated to a new position and got bent.  The engine mount was so corroded in one spot we had to have a tube welded, luckily we didn’t have to pull the engine to repair it.  The muffler had three cracks, the longest was six inches.  There was excessive play in the elevator controls, the aft walking beam was falling apart it required  repairs similar to what Don described in a recent post.  The fuel injectors hadn’t been cleaned in hundreds of hours, the engine fuel pressures and mixtures were way out of spec. The electric fuel boost pump pressure was way too high.  The mags hadn’t seen any maintenance in 1000 hours, requiring replacements.
 

On and on it went, luckily the owner has a sense of humour and is thankful to have it maintained properly and this is only the first round.

Clarence

[Adi]

Fantastic replies everybody, thank you so much. Thank you @ArtVandelay for taking a look at the detailed estimate and giving your opinion.

For everybody's reference, here are my 2020 and 2021 annuals: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kThsXYyDo6jfql72KEJtew8_CwhS2RIO?usp=sharing

> eight page annual checklist

Yeah, I was offered the choice between following the Mooney checklist and the base FAR part 43 annual checklist and I chose the former one, of course.

>  Stepping back and looking at your first two years more holistically, who did your pre-purchase, was it thorough, what condition was the plane in at that time and did you take care of a lot of squawks on the list at purchase? Are the things at this annual all surprises or did you know most of them were coming?  Surprises at annual should be minimal if an owner is proactive throughout the year and you had a thorough pre-buy.

Great questions. Prepurchase was done at Sarasota Avionics in Florida. There were a bunch of minor squawks at that time. More majorly they mentioned the prop being past recommended OH calendar time and 500hr mag inspection past due, which I used to negotiate the price down (and had the mags inspected and one OHed).

I did my first annual at Top Gun and the second one at Absolute Aero. Funnily, I think both shops are pretty thorough, but they found a disjoint set of expensive things to focus on. Almost certainly the surface corrosion that Absolute Aero squawked was there when Top Gun did the first annual, but Top Gun did not even squawk it.

> It's the second 10% annual that would have me looking elsewhere. My advice would be to try a different shop for #3. 

Maybe changing shops explains the new set of discrepancies. But it sounds like the second set of discrepancies are also pretty important and worth addressing, so I don't know what it means that the first shop missed them.. 

 

I'm an engineer but the fake kind (software, lol), so I don't know much about mechanical things. I am very interested to learn more about how my airplane works. I've been meaning to do an owner-assisted annual but circumstances this year made it impossible. 

[Shadrach]

6 hours ago, M20Doc said:

How does he run up and perform a hot cylinder compression check when the plane is on jacks when he arrives?  When he signs out the plane as being Airworthy does he leave you to reassemble the plane.  If yes, the airplane wasn’t Airworthy when he signed it out.

Not trying to be difficult, just dying to understand.  In Canada I could do that it this way as we never have to sign the plane as being airworthy, we sign attesting the the inspection and the work meeting standards.

Clarence

We normally do a cold compression check. Over the years, I have done several hot and cold compression checks on this engine back to back, I’ve never seen more than a few psi difference. He is comfortable with a cold compression test, perhaps the fact that we boroscope each cylinder at the same time adds to his comfort level.  If there was a questionable reading, then we’d run it up and try again. I’ve had one lousy compression test on this bird in 20 years and no amount of warming it up was going to change it.

You raise an interesting point. I typically start closing each section after he’s inspected it but you would be correct that there are often panels to be closed after he’s left the hangar. I don’t know about CA. In the US owners are allowed to R and R non-structural panels.  I suppose the argument could be made that if the IA did not verify that the battery access door was attached before leaving that the airplane was not verified airworthy. I’m not sure how the FSDO would see it. Nothing that is done to the airplane after he leaves requires maintenance credentials as it is all within the scope of 43 appendix A paragraph (c). On the other hand, how can you say a plane is airworthy when the top cowl was not installed when you last left it?  Maybe you can’t. But then, you can’t verify that the owner is not going to remove nonstructural items after you’ve left but before flying the aircraft. We use Mooney’s Annual/100 hour Inspection list. It makes no reference to verifying that nonstructural access panels our affixed. 

The reality is that after annualing the plane together for many years, there’s a level of trust and understanding. He’s welcome to come back and look at the plane with the cowl on or verify that I put the battery access panel or wing cover plates on correctly but I can’t say that he always has. He has a key to my hangar and knows he’s welcome to use it as he wishes

 

Edited August 29, 2021 by Shadrach

[philiplane]

When we're talking about 35 to 40+ year old planes, nothing on it owes you anything. Plastics crack, windows need replacement, rubber parts are dried and cracked. Corrosion is a constant battle. Tanks leak. Bolts and bushings wear. All of these things don't happen on new planes. Which of course cost $750k. 

If you want sub $3k annuals, you need to spend enough money at one time to completely refurbish the plane. Paint, interior, avionics, engine, prop...and every hose, switch, bolt bushing, etc. $200K ought to cover that. Even with that amount, the plane still won't be new again, and there will be something that crops up.  But it will be less often, till time catches up once again. 

Brings to mind the old saying, if God intended man to fly, he would have given him more money...

[cliffy]

One item brought up a while ago on the same subject is 'The Annual Inspection" and "Squawks" found during the "Annual Inspection".  

They are two different animals. The "Annual" can be completed and signed off with a list given to the owner of items to be fixed if unairworthy (the list is NOT required to be written in the log book, only notated to the owner that it was given). Most big shops don't operate this way BUT another way to do it is have the "Annual Inspection" done and a list made up of things found and then NO work to follow until YOU are contacted and can approve each item. This gives you the option to have someone like Saavy look at the list and tell you what is reasonable or not and/or even contact them for clarification of write ups. 

To just drop off the airplane at any shop and say "give me an annual inspection" leaves the door open to an open check book procedure. Having a stop in place order BEFORE extra work OUTSIDE of the Annual Inspection is in your favor financially.. 

I, to, had my first annual at Top Gun and while they were good they weren't cheap BUT they did a good job on mine. 

You might find that better negotiating on how to do things and having Saavy in your pocket might be money well spent in your situation.

Disclaimer:  I have no connection to Saavy only have meet him and listened to his presentations and videos. 

[OR75]

I am in the Bay Area and don’t pay as much . Not even close . 

25 hours is about right for an inspection ( open and close of panels, compression , gear , etc..) 

of course , an inspection is an inspection so in theory not even and oil change but in practical , best to add the oil change and filter change  … another $100 with the filter ? 
 

teflon hoses are on conditions and do get stiff, harden and built a shape over time.  Any A&P should know that. 
 

rest … no comment without the list of items