Francis is spot on. After the cost of the conversion, repaint, self done interior reupholstry, used 180 lyc, fixed pitch prop to save $ rather than a constant speed prop, 8.50's on the mains with Cleveland double puck brakes, 30 gal. extended fuel, etc, you can have one heck of a nice 180. Do I know what I'm talking about? yep...sure do. Look in my photo album at the black bird photo album called "The Buzzard"....been there and done that......would not do it again....too much $ considering I could have had a 180 and $ left over. And as to the question of the swept tail not having the same rudder authority as the square tail? It doesn't. The square tail conversion is a rather docile bird. The swept tail will bite you quickly in a cross wind and can be squirrely because of the lack of rudder authority when 3 pointing.

AKGrouch wrote:After the cost of the conversion, repaint, self done interior reupholstry, used 180 lyc, fixed pitch prop to save $ rather than a constant speed prop, 8.50's on the mains with Cleveland double puck brakes, 30 gal. extended fuel, etc, you can have one heck of a nice 180.

The only fair way is to compare tailwheel conversion itself, and not throw a bunch other factors into it to skew the value analysis.

In fairness, assume that you start with either an old ugly nosewheel airplane with a 360 channel Heathkit avionics suite, or a freshly restored nosewheel airplane with a Garmin 5000 known icing panel and leather interior.

Then assume when it is all over you have the SAME old ugly or restored airplane you started with but now it has a tailwheel. Compare the costs on that, and nothing but that.

If you decide to have an old sad peeling paint job stripped and gold plated, or upgrade the panel, or put in a whole new freakin' engine and propeller... keep that separate from the value analysis of the landing gear upgrade.

(This is not aimed at AK Grouch personally, I have no idea what he spent or where he spent it). If you drop off your 1956 172 at Beverly Hills Ferrari and Antique Airplane Restoration Boutique, and tell them to do whatever it takes... at $100/hr shop rate plus buying the parts from Cessna at retail... and they take three years to do it, and you get a bill for $350,000... your 172 is still not worth $350,000. Of Course it would have been cheaper to buy a previously restored 172 for $35,000 that someone wisely spent $20,000 on restoring.

Remember when you'd see an ad in Trade-a-Plane, and the ad said "World's best Ercoupe, multiple trophies, $93,000 in receipts but you can STEAL IT for only $67,500!!!!!!"

Whatever you guys do, don't ever buy a new radio, or a bigger GPS, or bigger tires, or vortex generators, or Millennium cylinders, or an Eagle engine conversion for your airplane. Sell your airplane and go buy one that has already had all that stuff done...

I had a really awesome PA22/20 before this C 172 TW. I bought it for $19000 in 2006. If I had done a conversion, the a tripacer ramp ghost,it would have cost $45000. I didn't convert the C172 after I bought it. It was already done and I paid $43000 (I sold the Pa22/20 for 26K after several years of flying it with no major investment in maintenance other than annual, battery....). That's how I got mine.

I could have slapped myself after I bought the C 172 because a couple of really nice ones with more horsies showed up on Barnstormers right after I closed the deal. I saw a 175 TW conversion for the same money I paid for the C172 (I miss manual flaps).

Many folks get ass deep into these projects and find out later that there is no way to recoup your investment. Finding a well built one that need gone at the time you have cash in hand is the only convenient formula for getting one at a reasonable price. But that's how I buy all my airplanes (and cars, bikes, boats .....).

Going back to the example of the PA22/20: Many people spent years restoring these and converting them. Sometimes its a guy who is retired and needed a project and lost his medical after toiling for years, and sometimes it's an A/P-I/A that buys a wreck and makes chicken salad out of chicken poop.

I think over time there will be more of these out there on the chopping block and they will be a highly sought after commodity, but own one so I guess my opinion is a little skewed.