I have purchased two aircraft, both remotely. In both cases, I used a purchase agreement with earnest money. Prior to sending an agreement, I reviewed scanned logs in entirety, and hundreds of pictures provided by the seller, including of interior surfaces like the tail cone and inside the wings. Serious sellers will likely have most of this info already.

Having some confidence in the airframe allowed me to put a modest deposit down ($1000-5000), with purchase contingent on satisfactorily completing an inspection within an agreed upon time frame (30 days), negotiating a resolution of outstanding issues, and then an in-person viewing. If the seller was unwilling to resolve issues to my satisfaction, or agree to a financial concession, the earnest money is refunded. If the airplane was as advertised and I just decided to back out, they could have kept the earnest money. They were also obligated to sell to me on the agreed upon terms if I accepted the condition inspection as is.

In the second case, I had even taken delivery of the aircraft, flown it locally for an hour, and had an ignition switch failure. The seller offered to resolve it, or refund the purchase. I chose to have them resolve it, as it was a hard to find airplane (Cessna 205) with very low hours on the airframe and on a recent major. I ended up flying home commercial and returning a month later to get it, but it all worked out.

In my mind, the purchase agreement was a way to demonstrate good faith and serious intent, with some skin in the game on both sides. It is a lot easier to have a satisfactory resolution to any transaction if you know exactly what the expectations are.

hotrod180 wrote:

lawndart wrote:.... and having them install -C pistons that produce 200hp (another $600) while still having the ability to burn mogas. I personally am not terribly concerned about the parts availability of this engine. The 180hp o335 is essentially the same engine as on a Stinson 108-2 or -3, which was one of the recommended aircraft in that other thread you referenced. Having an essentially zero time, smooth, 200hp engine in an all-metal, four place aircraft for around $30k sounds pretty appealing if they accept the offer I'm willing to make.
....

While I'm admittedly not a Stinson or Franklin guy,
I've never heard of this "-C pistons" business.

As far as mogas use goes, Petersen Aviation does both 87 octane & 91 octane mogas STC's,
and the only Franklins on their model list are 4 bangers.

FWIW Petersen has had mogas STC's for the 150 and 165hp Franklins since at least 1992, which is when the STC was installed for my Franklin 165 and Stinson 108-3.

The Franklin models being fairly rare these days can be a bit confusing. The 150hp(2600rpm 7.0:1) and 165hp(2800rpm 7.0:1), and 200hp(3100rpm 8.5:1) helicopter model are apart of the "original" o-335 family made back in the 1940's, all of which are 335cui, with a bore and stroke of 4.5"x3.5".

The Franklin 220hp (6A-350-C1) is a 2800rpm engine of a much newer design from the 1960's with 350cui, bore and stroke 4.625"x3.5", and a 10.5:1 compression ratio. This model has a very different case, cam, cylinders, manifolds etc compared to the o335 series.

From this new 220hp model, they made the quite rare 6A-335-B series engine (180hp), which is the same basic engine as the o350, but with the smaller bore diameter of the previous o335 series. The cylinders are not interchangeable with the previous o335 series. I'm not sure what the compression ratio of this engine is. The "-C" business is using the previous generations Helicopter pistons to bump the compression up to 200hp, which I don't believe is a legal mod.

Thanks a lot for the replies guys, especially with respect to how to deal with the steps that are taken in the sale process. I passed on this one, but the search goes on!

Steve