I Bought a Broken Airplane for $45,000... Finished!

I will not financially recover from this. And I ended up spending more on the repairs than I paid for the airplane. Hello, my name is Jimmy. This is Jimmy's World. As you may know, this is Big Bertha. It's a 1974 Cherokee Six, and I picked it up nine months ago for $45,000. Now there was some catch. It has not been an annual for 24 years, which is longer than most of you watching this video have been alive. This one is the 300 BTU version. There was also a 260 horse version. It has a useful load of 1,450. It'll cruise at a whopping 135 knot indicated or about 150 knot true airspeed, burning a solid 16 gallons an hour. When I bought this airplane, nothing worked. Those gauges, the oil pressure gauge was all screwed up. The oil temp gauge didn't work. I have no idea about the alternator. The fuel tanks, none of those work. The fuel pressure, I think that one worked. So that's one. Just to get it airworthy to make a 45 minute trip, it took me about $4,500, $4,500, because we changed all the fluids. I had to pay an AMP mechanic to go and do some inspections to sign off on the ferry permit. While we changed the air filter, the air filter just crumbled in my hands because it had been on there since 1997. Now let's go over everybody's favorite, all the shiny stuff. The audio panel, $1,500. It's a PS Engineering 8,000 BT, the Garmin 430, the 330 ES, and the 155, along, I think I had this, and I bought a 106 that was right here. I ended up taking that out because of that, and we'll get to those in a minute. Bought this, I think it was 6,000 bucks. The 330 ES was about $2,000. The KX155, now this already had one in here, but it was broken. So I had to buy another one of these, which magically, $2,000. Behind this panel is a magic box from Approach Fastack that did all the wiring to everything. And that, with all the harnesses, the box, and then the changes with those, was right at $3,000. Next down the line is the Trio Avionics Autopilot. This, with the installation, everything was just over $5,000 for the Autopilot. The next thing I put in was this JPI 830 engine monitoring. It was right at $3,000. That brings us to the G5. Now I had everything else done and finished and was flying it for 50 hours. And I'm like, you know what? I wanna upgrade to some G5s, because why not? These cost me about $6,000. So that meant I had to get some LED strobe lights, which was an additional $2,000 on top of the $6,000 for those. The altitude encoder that's hid behind here was about $500. And the ELT that I had to put in was another $500. Many of you remember the oil pressure gauge was all kinds of weirdness. Got that figured out, it was just the gauge itself, which, ta-da-da, Jason from your stack made it work again, thank you. I had to buy these plastics here, and the seatbelt, boop, there, and the other one over there. When it's all said and done, I spent right at $50,000 after buying the airplane for $45,000 to get it to where you see it now. If I would've had a shop do this, I would've probably spent another $15,000 to $20,000 just in labor to have them do everything that was done to this airplane to get it to where it is now. If you wanna see me do another project or another build or something like that, let me know in the comments section below what airplane you think would be a cool project to do. And who knows, maybe if I'm feeling crazy enough to do all this stuff again, we'll do that. Otherwise, I think I wanna go check out some other airplanes. Oh, man, I love flying. Winterhaven, November 6th. Yes, I do. Whiskey Base 11. On the handling factor, it handles like a pickup truck. I mean, that's what it is. It's the suburban of the sky for that reason. That's just what it does. I'm gonna give it a five because it handles like a minivan. But it's really stable. I'll say that. With the tip tanks out there, the fuel in it, and IFR, it is definitely way more stable than my Cherokee 180 that I had. So handling, I'll give it a five because of the stability, but it is no acrobatic machine. That's a guaranteed. Maintenance, it doesn't get any better than this. This is the cheapest six-seater maintenance you can have because of the simplicity. Fixed gear, square wings, and that's it. On the maintenance category, solid nine. Fuel economy, I'm gonna give this a seven only because it's a six-seater and it has a 1,450-pound useful load. Therefore, when you're burning 13 gallons an hour, give or take, you're hauling a lot of stuff for that amount of fuel. So that's why I'm gonna give it a seven on the fuel economy. Cargo, it's a 10. Unless it had a door in the back like a C-130, that's the only way that it would be made better. You have a big cargo door back there, two of them. You got the passenger door and then another cargo door. All these seats come out in about three seconds. You just lift up and pop them out and then you can fit all kinds of medical supplies back here. Safety, I'm gonna give it an eight, and here's why. It has the fixed gear, which is a definite plus. This engine, it's an IO540. They're bulletproof. They last forever, 2,000-hour TVO, and it flaps. I mean, you can land anywhere on this thing, 750-feet landing distance. That's backyard kind of stuff. So I'll give it that. Now, the one thing that holds it back is there's no parachute. And the other issue that I have for safety is while the CG envelope on this thing is gigantic, people often underestimate or overestimate its capability. So I do know that there was somebody that I was acquainted with in the entrepreneur organization that I'm a part of, and they had one of these out of Utah where it was really hot, high elevation. So I'm guessing that the intensity altitude that day was probably 10,000 feet or something. And he had it completely full, six people, baggage, everything. And unfortunately, whenever he took off, I think he was trying to climb or something like that too much or whatever, but it went into a stall and a spin. And really, unfortunately, it did take his life and a couple of other people's that were on the plane. That's the reason I'm gonna take it down a notch on safety is because it makes you feel too comfortable, if that makes any sense. So you think you can get away with a lot more stuff than you actually probably ought to be getting away with. And you'll hear everybody's story about how they go over gross all the time on these airplanes, which that's a dangerous game to be playing. Quality, man, I'm gonna give it a six. And that's because it feels like it goes together like an old Ford Mustang, like a 66 Ford Mustang, which it looks beautiful and everything, but if you've ever worked on them or restored them, the fit and finish on those things is horrific. Performance, I'm gonna give it a six on that as well. It's a pickup truck with wings. It's not a performance vehicle. It will haul anything you wanna put in here, but it's not a performance vehicle, similar to the handling characteristics. It's not a sports car. However, the performance, I will give it because you got a big honking engine up front with 300 BTUs, clear wings, and a big old stabilator in the back, which means you can take off and land in somebody's backyard. So that part of the performance is absolutely fantastic. Value on this, I'm gonna give it a nine. The reason it's not a 10 is because the price on these things is going up quite a bit. Just in the past two years, the prices have more than doubled on these airplanes, way more than doubled. You used to be able to find one of these for a good one for about $75,000 ready to go. Now, you're hard pressed to find one for less than $175,000 in the condition that this one is in now. Oh, some of the really kind of neat things about this is the leg room on these. So I'm six foot tall and I've got this seat moved probably halfway up the track. And I've got friends that are six five and they don't even put it on the last notch in the, on the seat rails. So you can be a NBA player and this thing is gonna fit you. The same with back there. Now these seats, you know, the middle row seats, those are definitely for your kids, but that, the very back seats as well, ridiculous amount of leg room. My wife, when we were riding in it, she usually just stretches her legs out and it's super comfortable for her. Oh, one fun thing. In the POH, it does have a section about not having that back door on it. So you can fly with things falling out, whether it's skydivers or if you were delivering some pharmaceutical materials over the Gulf Coast, say from Cuba or the Dominican Republic, or even, you know, one of the South American countries and you had to drop it off just outside of Key West or something like that. You know, that back door does come off and it does work. You just tip the plane that way or just chuck it out. At least that's, that's what I've heard. I don't know anything about that. Would I buy one of these? Well, the answer to that is obvious. Yes, because I did. However, let me, let me just go on a little bit more about this is I, I'm impatient if you haven't picked up on that, and I want to go faster. I've looked at a few of the other airplanes. I'm looking at twins, like a Cessna 310, 340, maybe if you wanted to go up the pressurized, or a Seneca, which is the exact same airplane as this. Inside, it just has two engines on the wings instead of the one up front. I'm not, you know, Aztecs, nah, not a huge fan of those. They're nice airplanes, but for me personally and my mission, that back door is a big deal. Just for family and loading and unloading things, I never realized how I underestimated the value of having a back cargo door, back passenger door. Oh my goodness, what a fantastic day to fly. Really, really is. All right, well, if you haven't already, hit that like, hit that subscribe. I really appreciate the subscriptions, and I'm starting to do this more on a full-time basis. So we're going to give it a shot and see if we can't make something happen with this old Jimmy's World thing. My name is Jimmy. This has been Jimmy's World, and I will see you on the next video. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.