I just bought the cheapest cesna 421c in the world but it has a huge repair bill that is just the initial estimate for repair on this thing frankly it seemed a little too nice for Jimmy's world but we're moving up in the world you know what I'm saying the 421 has long been my dream airplane I have been saving up for years and hunting for years to find just the right one I started with this little airplane a Cherokee 180 sold it to get into a bigger airplane realized it was way too slow and then got into even a bigger airplane with more engines and then sold and traded for the 310 and then sold and traded for the Lance a and now it's time for me to sell both of those and trade up to the big daddy the 421c I can finally take all of my family on a trip at the same time in an airplane it is such a blessing to be able to share this adventure with you so thank you so much if you haven't already subscribe like do the YouTube thing so we can share this adventure with more people this airplane is special because it has enough seats it has enough fuel to get the distance that we need to go and most importantly it has a bathroom on board it's a little bucket but it still counts as a bathroom that way when the little kid kids and the other people need to go potty we can just keep on flying and they can do their business so we can make the trips much much faster without stopping every 2 hours I've been hunting for the perfect 421 for a long time however a good one is really expensive I could buy a cheaper one like these projects however I did the math and by the time I fix it up I'd actually have more money into it than if I just just saved up and bought one that was already ready to go on March 11th which ironically was the same date I was trying to get the 310 up to Tas because I had a gear issue they had one there that I had been trying to put an offer in trying to make a deal with the same day I was talking to them about the gear issue I got news of this any latest status on the potential airplane acquisition okay so it turns out I think I may have actually bought that airplane the cesna 421 Golden Eagle is a 7even seat twin engine airplane developed in the' 60s the 421c has a new wing with no gas tanks out on the tips and a new landing gear a hydraulic landing gear not the troubl some electromechanical landing gear that I had issues with sports a couple of 375 horsepower Continental geared turbo intercooled engines on each side that suck down about 50 gallons an hour which is a lot of fuel maximum speed on this is 256 knots which is maximum speed maximum cruising speed is 2 40 knots at 20,000 ft that's awesome the maximum speed on this is more than our little hot rod behind me at 240 knots and at 20,000 ft up this thing we can only go to about 10,000 ft but that one will go way higher and way faster and carry a lot more stuff and also drink a lot more fuel and cost a heck of a lot more to maintain operate and to purchase that's why I have to sell it I just found out that we're going to be doing a live auction party so on May 18th when that auction ends we're going to be live in a studio in Texas watching the end of the auction to see and to congratulate whoever the winner is thank you airspace auctions and arrow verse cuz that's where it's going to be it's a platform dedicated to Aviation and Aviation Enthusiast arse we'll put put the description down there sign up it'll be free for everybody to watch I hope to see you there can I get a clear prep we got the 310 all fixed up flew it up there weather was perfect the airplane worked perfect it was really cold the last hour though okay I don't know if you can see this I can very clearly see my breath and we made it the reason you're not seeing the full flight is cuz it was boring nothing happened on that trip it just flew as smooth and as nice as could be and now we can check out the 421 which I have actually never seen even a picture of until now I'm here at T in Defiance Ohio they specialize in Twin Cessnas that's all they do and that's why the 310 is here because they're going to check it out they're the number one shop in the world coming in they just pulled that one in that's a fancy one it's another 421 fancy ooh with some winglets and such okay I'm looking for an airplane just like this 421 kilo mik that's a 340 see those tip tanks right there belong to a 310 there's another 310 back there what's back there there's another so they got three 310 something back there okay look this is a heater this is what I wish that was working on my 310 so I went a froze to death okay here's a 421 okay let's see is this it paint a little different 71 Lima Romeo no that's not it so I think the only option is it must be this one back here okay this is a 421 it looks like it could be it we got blue uh 421 Kil mic okay yeah this is it so let's just take a look back and get a look at the old girl wow that's that's nice I noticed this winglets that's cool it was not on the pictures though those pictures were for 2017 so sometime between 2017 and now I guess they put winglets on it that's cool I'll take it makes it go faster climb better you know all the fancy stuff got hubcaps on it also makes it go a little faster one weird Quirk about this are these uh hub caps and you may be wondering why does it matter if an airplane has Cub caps and yes these hubcaps actually make it go faster because this airplane got rid of the inner door over there so that that wheel is showing whenever you're flying so because they put a cap on there it makes it smoother under the wing that's cool it's got all the speed mods on it the wing thing out there supposed to give it another five knots the strikes in the back supposed to give another five knots these things right here probably a couple knots and uh I don't know there's probably other stuff on here that I haven't yet to find yet so let these boys do their work and they will come back when they're further along or maybe when it's ready to pick up because yes I actually have to do some training because this airplane is so much more complicated than anything else that I've flown you know I probably should have used the buyer checklist that ces.org has for free they're the experts in these Cessna Twins and T is the people who run the twin Cessna flyer organization they offer a ton of stuff for free and one is a buyer's checklist that I probably should have used this an engine 375 horsepower Continental 520 turbo right here and it has basically a transmission right here and these propellers sick 7 and 1/2 ft from the top to the bottom is how big of an area that sucker goes it's just nuts and they're Ram engines which are fantastic so should have stronger case on there have lesser problems last longer okay it looks like an engine Brown hoses are good that's all part of that Ram which make things last longer exhaust so we'll come back so let me go show you the uh repair estimate but this exhaust right here put in the comments how much do you think it is for both engines to comply with what's called an airworthiness directive on this exhaust just go ahead and have some fun put it in the comments you just let me know what you think alternator and this also has what's called flight into known ice which is another reason I got the C model cuz these de I boots it's got more de icing back there back there has a heated front windshield up there and also has your propeller de ice stuff as well so that you can you know if you're going into bad weather and it's cold like it is outside you can make it through safely a monster nose compartment on this thing it's over 6 ft long inside here oh there's the heater right there this is also on the repair list and we'll come back to that too how much do you think to just do a check on a heater this one's they said it was working fine nothing wrong with it but it's been over 10 years since it's had a check and throw in the comments how much do you think it is just to do a check on that heater I don't know what that is why it's all just siliconed I have no idea what that's about let's just look at it paint overall see seems to be okay engines mid-time engines they look all right here's the other engine same same story as the other side I'm still a little confused by the winglets I mean I like them I do they're pretty cool and they do a lot of good stuff but I was not on the pictures I I was not expecting that inside of course it's all taken out like that look at the tail back there what it's got strikes on it like a Lear jet okay those were not on the pictures either I wonder if they were done the same time as the winglets well that's cool again you know the paint on it actually looks pretty stinking good and I'm not seeing a lot of corrosion so my understanding is this airplane has been all the way around the world it used to live in Australia and then Singapore and then it was in Hawaii and then Texas and then California now it's going to be in Florida apparently emergency exit let's make sure all the bolts are on there so our emergency exit door doesn't fall off Boeing all right let's go inside check her out not going to see a whole lot inside because all the interior is taken out but let's just see what we got you know this this looks pretty good smells nice smells like leather in here that's nice panels are nice it's even got privacy curtain okay so I'm going to rant for just a second you see that little tinted visor right there this thing yeah you have to have a full FAA certified STC and all kinds of other crazy stuff just to have this in the airplane isn't that silly and ridiculous on some of the level of things that okay but it's got them and those are fantastic dude this is an awesome airplane it's got a little bit of a work order and I was just told that they found a fairly significant issue that is not fully accounted for on that work order which is going to make it way more than the $90,000 that's already quoted so Jimmy why in the world are you buying such an expensive airplane especially one that's got some known issues because of the Bahama trip if I'm honest the 310 four Max and it doesn't have autopilot in it doesn't have a heer uh it just doesn't I can't do much with it outside of local stuff in nicer weather this airplane allows me to go pretty much any time of the year all around the world yep so we're going to see if we can't take some longer trips and we're starting with the Bahama trip you guys already know about it we're giving away a trip to the Bahamas we're going to be flying there with 40 other airplanes May 9th through the 13 go to save 310.com get the full details there you can win a trip or you can just sign up directly with the Bahama people and pay and make sure you're going if you've got your own airplane and all that kind of stuff so I look forward to seeing you there we still have some more stuff to check out let's finally let's just take a look at this repair bill it's insane here is page one of the repair bill here is the rest of it still going 24 pages of notes and discrepancies and repair and stuff let me zoom in on this little bit right here that is just the initial estimate for repair on this thing yeah yeah it's a lot however there's nothing major in this repair you got a couple of really expensive things how much did you think it was on that exhaust over there [Music] $30,000 that's how much it is every 12 years just to keep it legal and safe they don't put the stuff in there just because but it's $30,000 every 12 years you have to spend just on that exhaust piece right there the heater issue what was your guess at least $10,000 just to do that overhaul and they have to be overhauled every 10 years yeah that's nuts although I think I would have paid that on my trip here to have a working heater if I'm honest with you so that's the cost of having really expensive airplanes now one thing that does concern me is this piece of metal that's sitting on the wing right here um Let me let me just show you what we're talking about let's take a look inside here what we got oh oh that one's it's fancy it's got the shock on it wow hydraulic right here for the gears and all that stuff that is a nitrogen bottle for the Emergency blowdown you got your gauge there to see if it's good to go then there should be there it is right there there's your oxygen bottle your 11 lb oxygen emergency breathing air oxygen look at the size of this it is it's over 6 ft long you can fit a bunch of baggage up here back here you can fit 331 lbs just in this area here minus out some of the other stuff so there's weight there and then 160 lb up front minus avionics and stuff like that and I think the radar is what you can see through that hole right there I think that's the back of the the radar Dome thing that's up here that sends out stuff for your radar inside you know what I haven't seen is any of the seats what is oh yeah there you go hey those look pretty good these right here are the pilot and co-pilot seat don't know how much we're going to be able to see of those nice Lamb's wool seating right there carpet looks like it needs to be cleaned pretty good but I mean shoot the seats oh yeah smells nice leather fantastic that definitely needs to be clean oh here we go let's see fuel tester thing do not tow gust lock on it goes in the back glass cleaner sweet and spicy caffeine free Good Earth something and our books pilot operating handbook cool I just noticed something as I was grabbing the camera that I didn't realize that is super cool and it's this little white patch right here which is pretty much impossible to see on camera oh there it goes right here this little thing right here these are spoilers when you hit a button inside there they goop they little flaps that come up so you can slow down on your descent from really high altitudes without changing the power settings which on these engines hurt the engines so this airplane is loaded it's got which I didn't realize these winglets right here behind me it's got uh kind of hard to see there well the the strakes behind there under the tail it's got those which are really cool it's got the spoilers on it and then I yeah I saw the little what's called micro vorticy uh vgs on this part I don't see them on the rest of the wing out there which I'll just have to figure out which one it is paint's good on it the engines are good the interior is nice avionics are little older dated but nothing we can't update fairly easily they've already done the full inspection on it they did find a few things I've already talked about those major things uh this right here I don't know what that is so I'm going to have to get Tony over here to talk to me about what that is and Tony by the way super he's a legend he is the guy that started this and uh he actually advises the FAA on Twin Cessnas you're going to love what they started with they started with an old straight tail 310 to get the twin Cessna flyer whole thing for all the owners and operators mechanics and everybody else that's even around these airplanes so they know all the little deals with all the nuances of these airplanes and he just happened to print me up the very first ever article and it was from no 1989 number one look at that that's pretty neat and I got a lot of information off of the the website there a lot of it's for free the gear rigging stuff and all that and then you can pay for the memberships and it's a pretty cool organization I am now a member of it and we're actually going to be starting to do more stuff with them because of this airplane and all of the Just the neat stuff about flying a twin engine and how many more doors it opens up in the aviation world I have been a member of twin Cessna flyer since 2021 best money I've ever spent they have a huge amount of resources you have a twin cesser twin engine airplane you go check out twin ssa.org you'll be glad you did did well let's go find Tony and find out what the heck that corroded piece of metal is about cuz that looks expensive all right so this is Tony he is the the main guy here behind all this and the legend the myth That's Tony Tony walk us through uh I noticed that we had some corrosion stuff over there but walk us through what what you guys found well we were doing an annual inspection on the airplane and uh which was going to transition into to a pre- buby evaluation uh for prospective uh new buyer because the owner was selling it uh the airplane in between as in conjunction with doing the annual inspection this aircraft is 421 has a secondary fuel system in it fuel tank in it as a long range tank that's added and into the engine to cell kind of mounted behind the engine area that so it back here yeah so it sits in this area and this is the fuel tank itself right here correct that's the fuel tank out of that Wing yes that goes inside this area inside this area in here okay and it adds an additional 26 gallon of fuel back here the fuel then's transferred from this tank into the wings where then it's used to the engine this Tony guy is so stinking smart the location of this tank and the construction of this tank we found in the past has a real problem with getting corrosion into the structure around it a whole lot of really bad things happen in this area uh first of all the tank construction if you want to look at it this is a a rubber bladder weird inside of it and then to protect it from Heat and the environment and give it some kind of structure so it doesn't just collapse when it's sitting in there they stick it inside of a stainless steel box assembly and then they coated this box with some type of like insulation material in it and they sprayed some of it on some of it are panels that kind of like Drop in around it and so on but over the years what we find is that this holds moisture and it also releases some type of chemical which I think is probably like probably chlorine like chemical and it will get into the aluminum structure around it and cause other corrosion around it so if we look here's one of the straps you can see some of the aluminum right there uhuh yep yeah here we go see some of that and some of it in there oh yeah so any moisture that gets in between there gets stuck and then moisture of course causes corrosion yeah so the big problem is is is for us in a maintenance field inspection field is that this is all enclosed so without doing an awful lot of work you can't see it so there's no it looks perfect from the outside until you get down inside of it and no one's really tearing it apart enough to be able to get down inside and look at it if they don't know what the issues are so is there a specific time how far you're supposed to check on that corrosion not not really no sust never set up a time limitation on it uh it's just an area where you it says inspect generally for condition and your condition and my condition and somebody else's condition is all kind of different and how you how extensive you get in and find it now our advantage has been that these these are not in every airplane they're in some as an option and but they're in different models airplanes so the Cessna 421 the 414 the Cessna 340 the Cessna 310r series airplanes have this kind of tank as an option in it and we have found uh some heavy corrosion in the airplane sporadically over the last 10 years and we found like three pretty heavily corroded ones in the last since the first of the year actually oh wow so it's pretty prevalent now because the airplanes are getting old so and one of the big things that propagates this kind of problem is H repainting the airplane and when they strip the paint the water and stripper stuff gets down in around the crevices of things gets down into this soaks it and we'll look in a little bit I'll show you where it actually you can see where the stripper and water has gotten down into to it and it attacks this stuff which is causing the corrosion to happen yeah it makes sense well let's go back and yeah let's take a look you want me to grab one side of no I can get a hold of it so this cover here does come off but it takes a lot of work it's like this is the firewall another problem here is a lot of the Heat this is a firewall this is only 16,000 stainless steel and this is the turbocharger here and it can housing can run as high as, 1600° and or more and it separates that from that tank the hottest part of the hottest part of the airplane from a fuel tank is a 16,000 piece of stainless right protects it in between and it so to get into that tank you have to kind of remove part of the tank and then you can remove the cover in it and what you'll find in this cover underneath is that that that tank will be in there then inside of this cavity this area in here has this piece which we've already started taking out but the there's a lot more of these pieces that if you can see oh wow yeah see what like the structure is like in here now we've tore this up some getting it out because it's just so flimsy and everything but you can see the kinds of corrosion that are on the inside of it and so that I mean yeah you can you can practically put your hand through that yeah well they were there were holes in this and here as well you can see this corosion this was should this should be solid aluminum stuff and you can see that it's just it's just dust yeah and it's gone yeah looks like the back of the Elvis yet yes and then and then you'll have other areas of corrosion in it these are this is the top Wing skin this is the important starts to become the important part and so that would be areas that in most likely this area in here can be cleaned we can stop it where it's at you can take and clean this on the surface a material like this we can clean like about 10% of the thickness in it and then treat it and not have to really do anything structural but the really scary part is that here at this location underneath is the main Spar of the wing so this is the part that's like the main Bridge of this Wing that holds the entire wing and the engine and everything on and if it gets corrosion into here it's horribly expensive to repair so we wanted to get it Stu popped in here before it got to that so we're going to be doing some more removal here and picking this up and we get inside and we'll clean this underneath and we'll clean these skins if possible we've had to come in before and take these plates off here these structural plates you can see they hold the engine in we've had to take this skin in here loose and completely remove it and put it in uh I don't think we're going to have to go that deep in this this but right now it's important to get it stopped now and not have to go that much not let it continue so it goes on that far people ask well how much is too much corrosion and you know yeah any kind of yeah um especially in these structural members obviously Cessna didn't design it to take the stresses that it's required to take with with factoring in corrosion they didn't that wasn't part of the part of the deal when they designed it they uh uh we don't have a lot to go on here because we have to just rely on sas's original Engineering in the airplane which is bring it back to its proper condition okay that's not the best thing in the world but this is the worst that we've found on the airplane I can live with that you can see this firewall is just is really kind of like just a yeah a stainless steel blocking it's not very thick yeah with a little bit with it's just this heat treat material kind of like just kind of like stuck on it now when we're done here with all this we'll go back in and put a newer style a firewall Sil that'll go to 5,000 de and we'll TR that on to this material and and it's not uh it it doesn't U react with moisture like this in it we've got a lot of new materials that is really excellent compared to what they had back in the mid '70s overall uh I don't know if you inspected this airplane or looked at it at all do you have any opinion on this airplane overall solid airplane need love complete pie J no it's a it's good it's a good solid airplane um it it doesn't have anything that every other airplane could possibly have in it that that's this vintage I tell people a lot of times that you know we're really not in the mode of maintenance on the airplane we're now today in the mode of restoration on these airplanes these are true up and up Antiques and so you're not an owner you're the caretaker of this airplane at this point so uh it is something that has gotten more prevalent the re the reason that this makes these airplanes make sense is that the value has come down enough in it that we can buy them at a purchase price that's maybe a tenth or less of what a new airplane would be and even if it seems expensive to maintain per year that's substantially less than what would be to buy a new aircraft today and on uh for us there's not really any new airplanes being built that are in this category of airplane they're just not available in a new condition at all so it's going to keep them viable for a long time even though that they may quote seemingly take a lot of money for the maintenance on the airplane we need to pay attention to this kind of stuff things that we've learned over the years uh corrosion uh it's much easier to fix corrosion when it's a three or four hour job to clean it up and treat it than it is to wait another eight or 10 years and then spend hundreds and hundreds of hours trying to replace sections of of the airplane because the corrosion has ate it completely up um fantastic all right Tony any uh wise words uh for anybody looking to buy a twin Cessna airplane have somebody that knows what they're doing do a preby evaluation to begin with on it don't forget to look for it I just had a phone conversation with somebody that had put some money down on an airplane that was in up in the dtas Twin they were statement was that well it's not doesn't have any corrosion in it because it's up in dry country it's always been up here in the Dakota area or Montana areas when they got to started looking at it the wing was corroded completely almost in two in it and so they he backed got luckily he was within a day of spending his money on the airplane and he backed out of it and got away got away from it but it all of them are could have corrosion for some reason or other in it and corrosion is our biggest enim the engine stuff yeah it's expensive it's in kind of important but we can fix the engine pretty easy all I got to do is make a phone call and you can get a new rebuilt engine pretty much all of them so that's not where we want to put our Focus very much we want to look and make sure that the airframe that we're putting that engine on is in good condition in it frankly it seemed a little too nice for Jimmy's world but we're moving up in the world you know what I'm saying put in the comments let me know do you think this was a good purchase or not has to be a lot better value than the Elvis jet but we'll see now we got to fly back down go check on the other airplanes do some more work on the Elvis Jet and they're going to give us a call when this thing and the 310 they haven't even opened up the 310 yet the Silver Bullet find out what they find out there before we can have the auction go live in May on the 310 and the lanir see you next time I want to give a huge shout out to Twin Cessna flyer twin cna.org the great organization they got a huge amount of resources here go check them out it is a fantastic group of people that have helped me so much already with the 310 and soon to be this airplane that I just bought a 421 that's right a 421 the Big Daddy of all twin Cessnas I just realized I haven't looked in this Locker [Music] wow this is always a good sign oh this tire chalk there you go pilot only to close baggage door so that you don't break it because on these you have to push that in order to close it and lock it down nice this is a fantastic family hauler yes if you like this video you're going to love that video and make sure you're subscribed by clicking down here
