looking to buy PA-24-400

[James Bader]

I'm looking to buy a 400 comanche without damage history if anyone knows where one is.
Thanks
Mike

[N3322G]

Mike,

Welcome to almost Comanche ownership. 400s are awesome machines - raced one once. Have the Twin in the photo so I'm not as close to 400 owners.
FYI. About 150 400s were built and about 150ish 39s, were built, I have a 39. 39 is the factory counter-rotated Twin other PA30s were field converted to counter-rotated.

IMHO. Depending upon the quality of the repair, a 400 with damage history can be in better shape than one with no damage history. Whatever path you take, be sure to get a pre-buy by a good Comanche knowledgeable. Once you buy, there's a great Comanche ownership course you will want to take.

There are active 400 owners that do come to the electronic Forums. If you want to talk with a very knowledgeable owner that stays in touch with a lot of owners, you might try Matt Kurke at http://comanchegear.com/

[Wayne Haristy]

Mike, I see that there are two 400's on trade-a-plane right now.

[Clarence Beintema]

Hi James,

I own and am importing to Canada s/n 98. I bought it in New Mexico after lots of looking. There are several aon the market and some not listed but for sale. There were 148 built, 2 scraped by Piper, a few wrecked over the years and about 100 left.

They have many of the same issues as the rest of the Comanches, props are a real problem at about 15k to replace.

If I can answer more question contact me clarence@tricityaero.com

Clarence Beintema

[James Bader]

Thanks for the help. I have flown to PA and looked at the 400 that is listed in Trade A Plane and I'm trying to work out a couple things that the owner wasn't aware of on the plane. Matt with Comanche Gear is a great guy and has went out of his way to help me on this 400.

I thought someone may have a 400 they were thinking of selling that has been taken care.

Thanks
Mike

[N3322G]

Mike,

RE: reaching those who haven't yet put a 400 on the market. You might consider running an ad in the ICS Newsletter. This e-newsletter is distributed to almost 100% of ICS members. Jim Worley puts it together and it is highly successful - he started several months ago. icsnewsletter24@gmail.com

You also might consider pulling the 400 owners off the FAA website and sending postcards describing what you want. I occasionally get these for my 39. Depends on how hard you want to work on it.

[James Bader]

Thanks for the help I was contacted by a person with the perfect 400 I was looking for and for a fair price and on the same day I had a friend call wanting to go in 1/2 partners on a A36 bonanza he had found. I chose to look at the partnership and missed the 400 man that was sick feeling. I have learned when you find the plane you have been looking for buy it.

Still looking for a 400.

Mike

[N3322G]

If your sense of humor is intact - 1 down, 149 to go ... Good luck.

[James Bader]

Thanks that's a good way to look at it.
Mike

[John Fuller]

If you are still in the market and willing to consider the advice regarding looking at one with damage vs. not, there is a beautiful one sitting at KMEV that recently suffered a gear collapse on landing. Might be a great opportunity, and it's parked outside a Comanche shop. Either that or I get dibs on the horizontal for my PA-39 if it's parted out!

[James Bader]

Yes sir I'm still in the market and just got back from Phoenix looking at a 400 but it didn't work out. While I was in Phoenix I drove down to Tucson and looked at a 1969 260c that had zero damage from talking to the owner. First repair in log book in 1969 with 82 hours on plane was right gear collapse with wing repair and aft belly skin and bulkhead replacement. I ask the owner why he didn't tell me about the damage in all the phone calls we had talking about the plane and it's history he said it was so long ago he had for gotten all about it. We were going to fly the plane until I seen in the log books the plane was 20 months out of annual. Then the next page in the log book was filled out with annual description being performed with date and signature still blank and the owner told me I could put any date I wanted in the blank and he would get it signed off. I got back on delta airlines and went home.

I'll look into the 400 you mentioned thanks for the info.

I'm on the road today looking at a 400 at 1pm and it also has damage history.

[md11flyer]

Wow! and the guy was flying the airplane regularly with the log book waiting for the annual signature?
Good thing you ran from that one.

Gary

[Kristin Winter]

James,

Welcome to the wonderful world of aircraft buying. I would like to say that in my decades of involvement that this was an outlier, but it isn't. A touch extreme, but the amount of fraud out there is amazing. A number of years ago I looked at an Arrow down in Corona that the guy told me it had been hangared all its life in Bakersfield, except for the last year. Yet, the first log book was full of 100 hour inspections from Kansas City Piper and the paper was so oxidized you could tell that the plane hadn't been an a hangar in many years. And this was a guy who claimed to be a Delta captain.

I have gotten to the point where I don't worry about damage history as much as everything else. Of course I want to see that it was repaired correctly, but give me a properly repaired plane with damage history, but has been flying regularly, over a hangar queen anytime.

[James Bader]

I'm learning to look at damage on a plane differently as time goes by. I looked at a good 400 with damage today with good paper work. We will see how it turns out.

[Don Pitts]

Pete Harris, Harris Flying Service, Brownfield Texas has a 400 for sale. 806-637-4656. Pete has forgot more about Comanches than most of us will ever know, he doesn't fly much anymore but is very interesting to visit with.
KBFE

Don, N9115P