Abandoned Airplane Will It Start? 10 Years in the Dark

Tear. Well, okay, I'm sad right now, but we got to go find another project. So, uh, I've got a line on something in a hanger over there. Let's go check it out. Here, open that thing all the way up. Could this be the next project? Maybe. Oh, yeah. There's some flat tireage. I wonder when the last time somebody was even in this hanger. Good morning. My name is Jimmy. This is Jimmy's World. If you're new here, hit that subscribe and that bell icon so you can get all these latest, weirdest, craziest videos of me doing financially suicidal things with airplanes and sometimes cars. This is a 19, I frankly have no idea what year this is, but it's a 172M, which has the little Lycoming 360 engine in it. This one's been sitting here at least five years. I just now opened the door for the first time in five years and it was a pain and I'm tired now. But today we're going to see if we can get this thing to fire up. So, uh, kind of excited about that. It's always fun to see an airplane or anything that's been sitting for a while, have some life come back to it. Maybe because I have no idea about the condition of this or anything. So we're going to find out if it fires up and if it does, then maybe I'll go ahead and buy it because the guy got ahold of me and they said, basically, uh, you got to get rid of this thing one way or the other, and it's either going for parts or we're going to see if we can't get it back in the air. All right, let's, uh, let's get closer and let's get cracking. Yeah, it, uh, kind of taken apart a little bit. Just, just a little. All right. Well, this is, uh, not very funny. It's not going to tell you any yolks. That's your plastic and stuff is all right. We got door panels here. The seats, those all look fairly new. Yeah. Your instrument panel down there. Okay. Okay. Biggest thing I'm looking for is corrosion. Cause I do know that there is a whole bunch of corrosion up here. Look at all that all along that you're seeing. And I just want to make sure that the corrosion hasn't gotten into really bad places. That's going to kill it. Yeah. You can see over there too. It's lifting the paint up, all kinds of different places. And back here, right there. Lots of spots. Yeah. The painted self in the didn't seem to be any dents or anything like that. I can see on this. What's your head? High wingers. Knock my head on that stinking again. All right. Let's see. Well, Oh, Hey, look, that's already still loose. Okay. Well we'll take that thing. All right. All right. Let's see what we got down in here. There is a battery still in it. I'm sure that's good fuel strain or drain. Definitely going to be draining some fuel out of it. It's got all the cylinders and spark plugs are still in it. So felt still on it. That thing's trash. Okay. All right. Not too bad. All the magnetos. I mean, everything is here. Okay. Let's see. Does it turn? Yeah. Engine's not seized up. I don't know how much compression. So this thing turns pretty easy. Oh, there's some compression. Okay. All right. Let's check the oil. Let's see what we got there. Whoa. That's a lot of oil. Eight, eight quarts, but it is clean as can be. Okay. All right. And fuel. We'll go sump the fuel and see how nasty that is. All right. Well, I'll be back. I want to know what everybody thinks if we're going to be able to get that 172 started. Devin, he knows the plane. So he's the one who just told me a little bit about it. Devin, do you think we're going to be able to get that thing started? It'll be a little bit. It'll be a little bit. It'll take some finagling. Yeah. Do you think it will ever be back in airworthy condition? Maybe. He's doubting it. And he's the one who knows the plane the best. All right, Phil. What do you think? He knows the plane a little bit. You think we're going to start up easy, provided the feelings are there. But it's going to be an uphill battle to the plane. Okay. All right. All right. All right. No comment. No comment. No comment. What do you think? It won't hurt your feelings, man. It ain't my plane yet. I haven't seen it, so I don't even know. Oh, yeah. He doesn't know anything about it. But set for five years, and I just opened the hangar today for all the way the first time in five years. And it was taken apart during an annual, and the mechanic died. And that's pretty much where it's at, is my understanding. Man, if a mechanic died on a truck tonight, I don't think I want to do that. I'm just saying. That's right. All right. Well, we'll see. Now we got to go find some gas, and then find a battery. We got to put air in the tire to drag it out while we attempt to do all this stuff. So let's do that next. Let's throw some air in those tires right there. Oh, there we go. Hey, look at that. That's frozen. Ew, bugs. We just found the chart in here, and it says August of 2009. Five years? It was five years ago. So it might be closer to 10 years this thing has been defunct. All right. Now we got to sump the fuel. I'm kind of curious to know how nasty this stuff is. And by nasty, I mean there's nothing in it, which is good and bad, because that means if there's nothing in it, that could be rust and other things in the fuel system, which is bad. However, if there was stuff in it, and it got old and varnished, that's also bad. So you're kind of screwed either way you go. Let's check the other side. All right. Check this side. Oh, nothing. All right. Now we got the fuel strain or drain. Let's see if anything comes out of this. This is dry as dry can get. Okay. All right. I've already discovered one thing I don't like about high wings. You need a ladder to get up there and check the fuel. I couldn't even climb on the strut bar there. So I got to walk all the way back and get a ladder to get up there to check the fuel. High wings. Really? So the front lower cowling is not on either. I'm going to go ahead and pop those screws off and take that thing off while we're working on it. Give us more access to everything and to make sure plastic parts don't go flying. Assuming, fingers crossed, this thing takes a spark, lights a fire. Okay. There's just two screws barely holding it on. Carburetors in there. The air box. Filter. Exhaust. Boots there. Dry rotted pretty bad. Yeah. Okay. All right. So still looking pretty solid. All right. We got the fuel truck here. We're going throw three gallons in each side and see what that does. That's Devin's best side. All right. It's not leaking anywhere yet, is it? Oh, hey, we got some down here already. That's a good sign. All right. There's $50. I don't see any fuel leaks yet. That's good. Yeah. Let's see just how nasty this tank is. Well, I don't even see any chunks. No leaks. There, leave that open. All right. Let's dump this side. Well, all right. Shoot. There's no chunks. Now we just got to get a battery to get some power. Or you can hand prop it. You want to hand prop it? Come on. All right. I got the battery back in there. Cleaned off the terminals. Put some water in it. What do you call it? Dielectric. Distilled water in the battery. It was dry as a bone. It was Ezekiel valley of bones here, people. So now let's throw this charger on it and see if things come alive. Do you see any fire? Smoke? I don't hear anything. Okay. That's good. I would be absolutely astonished if this actually worked. It doesn't seem to be locking. Go. There we go. Okay. All right. Let's see. There's the battery. All right. Let's check throttle. Okay. It seems to do what it's supposed to. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Carb heat. We don't need that. Radio master. Let's see here. Oh. I don't want to blow any fuses here. Okay. Prime. Prime. Yes. I already primed it four times, so we'll leave that there. And let's go ahead and hit the key. Why not? Can I get a clear prop? Let's see what we got. Nothing. I mean, it's possible something could be disconnected. You know, it is possible. We just got to find out what that is. All right. So I got the amp gauge hooked up. When that's not hooked up, nothing will work. I didn't realize that. So let's see what we got. Okay. There's more noise. Check this. Clear prop. Oh. That's the starter spinning. It's just not throwing it out. Okay. That's a good sign. All right. All right. For this type of operation, it takes a highly precise tool called a BFH. Yep. That right there. A little tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Come on, Bendix. Okay. Let's just see if it engages. Let's see if anything works. Try the flaps. Oh yeah. Those work. Nice. And even does it automatically. Whoa. Don't do that. Oh yeah. That's a bad idea. Well, the Bendix, if you can see that on in there, came out and it's at least engaged on the flywheel now. Let's see if we can't get any juice, throw the full juice to that. Let's go in here and see if we can get it to turn. All right. Clear prop. Oh yeah. That thing goes down to like three volts. That's no bueno. All right. We need battery. Okay. I got another battery. I found another one and that one tests a lot better than the other two did. So let's see what we got. I'm feeling optimistic. Let's prime it. Go ahead and pitch. On. Clear prop. Here we go. For all the money. Oh, now it's dying. And the RPM gauge works. Ah, it's alive. Oil pressure. I like it. Holy crap. I need a yoke. Wow. All it took was a battery. All right. Mag drop. There it was. I am shaking. I'm so nervous. This freaking thing actually idles. That's ridiculous. All right. Let's see if it. Oh, oh, it's time for a dance. I'm feeling a dance. Well, we just did a compression check and the results are not good. Number one got up to 36 over 80. Number two got even better at 18 over 80. That's not good by the way. And number three, that one was good. It hit above 70. And number four was about 65. And this is cold right after it's set for a while. So we were just trying to get a baseline. We're going to bore scope it now to see if there's pitting rust or anything else inside these cylinders because they are regular old metal. There's no chroming or no nickel, none of that stuff on these. So we'll see. And I did just call and a new to get a rebuilt engine is about $27,000. And it's going to take them every bit of 12 weeks. Cylinders run about $1,500 a piece for the cylinders. That's assuming that the camshaft is good. And knowing this, I think the guys said the engine had about 1300 hours on it. So, you know, at that point, you would probably just move forward with rebuilding it, honestly, just because of the total hours, how long it's set and everything else. And because we're already got some issues with these two cylinders here. So let's do a bore scope on it and see what that shows us. Sit rep. This isn't the one. That engine up front, there's just too much wrong with it, even though we were able to get it started, kind of a miracle that it did start. You you essentially buy an engine and get an airplane for free. Well, that engine is junk. So even though the rest of the airplane is salvageable, because of that, that's $30,000 sitting up front. And then you add in, I think the guy said he, you know, wanted $20,000 for the airplane the way it is. That's $50,000. And then it's going to take me at least $10,000 just to get the old stuff used back into where it is. And if you're going to go through all the effort and energy of all the other stuff, well, might as well spend and get just as tiny bit better of avionics to put in it, which is going to be another $30,000 or $40,000. So you're looking at $70,000, $80,000, $90,000. You'd be into this thing for more than $100,000 when you can go out right now and find these all day long for a lot less than that, you know, somewhere in that $60,000 to $75,000, $80,000 for a nice one. So the dollars don't add up on this one, unfortunately. Well, we are going to keep our eye out, keep looking for the next project. If you know of a good solid barn find or hangar find in this situation, let me know. Throw me a comment down in this video or shoot me an email and that contact information is in the description below. Thank you. My name is Jimmy. This is Jimmy's World. We'll keep searching. Keep on rolling.