What would it cost to get something like this reassembled and returned to airworthiness?

Barnstormers listing

Same plane listed on a different website.


1984 H-700  Helio Courier - us registration clear title ,tio 540 Lycoming ,1200hrs TT aircraft and engine from new, excellent compression NO propstrike .Ac is in fair condition needs restoration stored in dry hangar 20 years, no damage history no dents, needs assembly ,paint & restoration .Stored in a 30 ft. Race trailer . A&P disassembled 3 years ago new parts include windshield ,Aluminum gear, 120 gal fuel bladders, ( 2 left and right alerions pro recovered) $15,000 for the 2007 Hallmark 29 ft race trailer. $75,000 for the complete aircraft package deal only!  located in US Colorado

Let’s assume that the engine was properly pickled and doesn’t need a complete overhaul.  Let’s also assume that a complete overhaul/ modernization of the panel will be done later and not part of the initial cost to get flying.

Huge assumptions to make.  Sitting 20 years is going to do bad things to that engine.  Pickling is supposed to be redone after a certain number of years, and I don't recall the number off the top of my head, but I'm fairly sure it is in the single digits.  Add 1200 hours being on the engine before it was pickled (or not pickled), and odds are that trying to get a couple hundred more hours out of the engine is going to end up being expensive, whether you decide to tear it down before putting it on the plane, or not.  And don't forget the prop.

Same problem with the panel.  Instruments can go bad while sitting on the shelf for 20 years.  They might look OK initially, but then start showing issues after you start flying with them.  If you are looking at things like ADS-B compliance, it might work out to be less expensive to redo some of the panel from the beginning, instead of trying to make the old stuff work.

I spent over a decade in a shop where we occasionally had a customer bring us a plane that they had got "a real bargain" on, because it was out of annual.  They bought it knowing that it was time to replace the engines and props, and they had planned for that in their budget, along with the ferry permit to get it to our shop.  We did enough engine changes that we generally could have the plane out on the ramp doing the initial ground run with the new engines about two weeks after the plane was brought into the hangar.  The problem was always the annuals.  Usually the big problem that management would not be happy about, would show up after we had the old engines off (since that took less than a day), but before we had the new engines ready for the initial run.  Management would start complaining at us about how the customer had already paid the deposit on the engines and props (which is not cheap when you are talking about two TIO-540s or two IO-550s) and had been expecting the additional cost of a typical annual, which was not going to be covered by what we had found after opening up the airframe.

It really seemed like management viewed the problem as being our fault, even though we had repeatedly pointed out that taking jobs like this never ended well, and that our salesman needed to quit trying to "sweeten the deal" by offering a discount on the airframe inspection, because there is ALWAYS a reason that the plane ended up out of annual.

Short answer:  It's a gamble, and that plane can easily end up costing you several times more than you expected it to.  If you can't give up on the idea, find a mechanic that has enough experience working on that model to be able to remember the expensive ADs that apply to it, then have them go over the logbooks and the airframe, because replacing the engine, prop, and panel might not be the most expensive thing that plane needs to make it airworthy.

I forgot to mention that I worked on a Beaver that I was told was mostly back together, so it probably wouldn't take much for me to finish up the project.  It hadn't flown in years, the engine had been replaced with an overhauled engine before I started working on it, I had helped install an overhauled prop, and it had already been repainted, so it shouldn't take more than some panel work, a new interior, and a few other things, right?

Nobody had done an AD search on the plane.  Every AD I found that could involve replacing structural components, ended up requiring those structural components be replaced - I did save some time on one of those ADs, because it called for doing a dye penetrant inspection of a spar section, but I was able to see the cracks (plural) as soon as I got things opened up enough to do a visual inspection.  So much for the new paint job.

I guess I should have been more clear.

I said to exclude the engine and panel because I already have an idea what they can cost.

Airframe, no idea.

And as I previously stated


Without going over the airframe logbook, doing the AD research, and inspecting the airframe, all I can say is that there is likely a reason the plane hasn't flown in 20 years.  The plane being disassembled at some point, and then not reassembled, is not a good sign.  When things get to that point, you tend to end up hunting for parts that somehow went missing.

@JPN

I do appreciate your previous replies.

It’s a shame really Helios are such cool airplanes.  That one probably doesn’t have much future. The 1980’s built airplanes are super rare. Only possibility 18 built.

So I figure minimum 50k for the engine. Then panel, as much as you want to spend. Prop, paint, interior.  Better find a mechanic who has experience with Helio Couriers. It just never ends…