Speaking of undocumented repairs. I have seen ground looped planes with damage that have logs with "right wing replaced with serviceable wing" What if that "serviceable" right wing had repairs inside? I doubt you will find that repair info unless it was a rebuilt wing that was purchased. If the wing was repaired 30 years before on the donor plane, not so much. Legal? I imagine. When components are not time life'd. How about airframe hrs. say 5000TT, but the wings may have come off a donor plane with 15K TT. No records of that either.

Mark Y. wrote:Speaking of undocumented repairs. I have seen ground looped planes with damage that have logs with "right wing replaced with serviceable wing" What if that "serviceable" right wing had repairs inside? I doubt you will find that repair info unless it was a rebuilt wing that was purchased. If the wing was repaired 30 years before on the donor plane, not so much. Legal? I imagine. When components are not time life'd. How about airframe hrs. say 5000TT, but the wings may have come off a donor plane with 15K TT. No records of that either.

I've seen that as well Mark. We usually put a serial number of the plane it came off of so there is at least some traceability there. Technically that's how it legally has to be done.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

Money will buy complete logs, which are helpful when buying and selling. Using up is a different story. I have flown, and used up a one of, airplanes that had absolutely nothing in the logs except annuals for airframe and hundred hours for engine.

Not the best way to fly, but there is a lot of variation in flying airplane logs. I have also flown airplanes with complete and immaculate logs that had many serious grounding conditions. I came very close to using up one of those.

And a personal example: I owned an airplane in Alaska which had a pretty interesting history early in its life, much of which was documented in its first couple logbooks. Back then, operators logged each flight in the airplanes logbook.

While I owned the plane, I left the logbooks with a maintenance outfit, (duh) and somewhere along the line the first logbook disappeared. I sure couldn't blame the maintenance outfit.....I'm the one who left the books there.

Anyway, I was sorely dismayed at the loss of that book, but when it came time to sell, it made no difference whatever in the price. This airplane had some damage, which was easy to see and verify it'd been fixed right. That repair was in later book.

The plane I owned next was missing early logbooks, but had just come out of total rebuild......again, who cares? Look at the rebuild work, the FAA records to verify everything is documented and move on.

My employer was procuring a Cessna 206, and there was a newly rebuilt one near where I lived. Our maintenance outfit had viewed the maintenance. logs on line, and asked me if I'd go take a quick look to see if they should order a pre buy. I took a quick look, called our maintenance outfit and suggested they have a local mechanic look at the right wing, but nothing else, to start. They did, the mechanic said run, don't walk, and they bought a different plane. The repairs were logged, but really ugly, and probably not legal. Great logs, though.

Certainly not true in all cases, but as Contact noted, I've seen some real turds with great logbooks, and some great airplanes with poor logbooks. I'll take the latter any day.

The 182 that was the meat of the lawsuit I've described here previously was incredibly poorly repaired after 2 different accidents. An IA in California had supposedly repaired the firewall and tunnel damage, and his paperwork was excellent--but the repairs were terribly shoddy.

Similarly, the damage and subsequent repair to the right wing was well documented by an AI in Arizona, but one of the major issues was that the aileron cables had been misrouted through the wrong hole in a stringer, so that one of them had cut through that stringer.

I don't know which of the accidents took out the landing gear boxes, but the paperwork for the left one was top notch--but the repair was so bad that the left gear was visibly crooked, and the brake line was misrouted.

To the FAA, proper paperwork is essential, but to the average owner, the issue is whether the airplane has been properly maintained and repaired after any incidents, and perfect logs don't guarantee that--it's the personal integrity of the mechanic that does. When the airplane is older, the lack of paperwork is mostly a non-issue. Also, in olden times, few mechanics wrote much in the logs. It wasn't uncommon to see an annual written something like, "completed annual inspection per regulations," without any reference to maintenance/minor repairs that was done at the same time.

Cary