Mark Miller wrote:
: I'm looking at a 1982 Turbo Arrow as a first time purchase. I'm not
: new to aviation, and have sufficient time in the make/model to satisfy
: the insurance company. I haven't looked at the plane in person yet,
: but have had a few conversations with the owner about it.

My mechanic has a '77 turbo arrow with the Continental TSIO-360 210hp in it.
I would imagine the '82 is the same?. I (personally) wouldn't touch that
engine/airframe combination with a "10-meter cattle prod." It's notorious for
roasting cylinders, cooking turbos, and has an extremely twitchy throttle response due
to the turbo lag/boost. Even with the improved STC'd wastegate he put on, it's
still twitchy and makes boost all the time that must be throttled. It's also
necessarily neutered at 7:1 to keep it from detonating. I get 180 hp out of a carb'd
O-360 with more detonation margin on 93 octane cargas than his TSIO-360 on 100LL. Of
course if you go high, it's a different game, but my friend doesn't even have his
oxygen set up.

If that's the setup you want/need, that's fine... just making you aware of the
issues. I'd much rather have more engine and normally aspirated, but for an arrow
you're kinda stuck. If I ever get a turbo it'll be turbo-normalized at most.

Other than that, I wouldn't let 7000 hours dissuade you inherently. It's much
more a matter of how those hours were put on and maintained. Check the logs
thoroughly with someone who works on Arrows a lot, but don't assume they're correct.
There's an awful lot of "pencil-whipping" out there... especially for expensive
repairs. Take your mechanic arrow-expert to look at it... he'll know what big (read:
expensive) items to check for (gear issues, signs of a gear-up landing, shoddy
avionics installs, etc).

-Cory


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