I fly a pa23 partial Geronimo conversion..

Love it..

However, I have someone offering me "three" Apaches that are disassembled to use for parts (for sale). I really don't need anything currently, but you never know. My plan would be to put each airplane on a pallet (wings off) and put them in my building.

What should I offer? What is the scrap value? How do I figure this? Am I nuts?

With engines or without? Props? Avionics?

What's your cost per month to store? Take that into consideration, if you are renting space you might pay more in hangar or storage fees than the parts you take out. If space is free, that helps.

I am going to assume no engines, no props, no avionics value. My guess is that for an aircraft owner, the numbers don't work and the value for you is less than or equal to the transport cost to get them to your building. So the offer would be, "I will pick them up and take them off your hands."

But I'm sure experts will be along shortly.... (I am not one...)

Yes you’re nuts

If no props or engines, offer $900 for all three.

It seems like a scrap plane should always be worth 10x to 20x as much to a scrap parts dealer as it would be worth to an airplane owner. The parts dealer is getting requests from all over the country, and the world, from the whole fleet of perhaps 3000 flying Aztecs.

I understand if you are a part 135 or cargo operator with a fleet of 6 Aztecs it might work out to have 3 parts planes. But as an owner of 1 plane to have 3 for spares? The economics shouldn't work out for that.

Your friend with the 3 parts planes should get a quote from somebody like this to establish market price: http://www.whiteindustries.com/

Then he has an offer in hand and you can see if you want to match or not.

Are any a 1961 G models? I may need a couple parts. I’ve got 2 to keep flying N4457P and N4440P The G is different than the earlier airplanes.

Also check with Diamond Air in MT. They might need some parts.

Any no AD Props, Heaters, Control surfaces with no hail damage, Rudder trim tabs with good horns, wing tips, electric aux hydraulic pumps, cabin steps, nose parts, nose gear doors, STC mod parts and paperwork etc.

It’s all worthless until somebody needs something. Glad to see somebody saving some things to keep them flying. I wish more people would. Fog inside the airframes with a couple gallons of ACF50 before you put them away. Save what you can. Keep the N numbers active if possible.

We are headed for the old cars in Cuba type of operations in another 10 years if you want to fly something reasonably affordable.

I am going to reach out to John up in MT this week, if I ever get caught up on paperwork. I have only seen 1 so far, hope to see the other 2 in a couple weeks.

I have the means to store them, if needed. I have also put this post on the Apache Club website.

I have an acquaintance who is "in the business". We have had several conversations about "scrap value". The difference between the average pilot's opinion of salvage value and reality is almost laughable.

Jg

The overhead of acquisition, storage, customer support etc in a salvage business is substantial. You gotta sell a LOT of stall switches to pay for that.

You are right about that. There is also a lot of waste and new damage with the planes sitting outside.

There appear to be a couple ebay parts suppliers with Apache parts listed. It does take a long time to sell and most parts the shipping and boxing cost is higher than what the part is worth.

Engines and props sell fast. Avionics and some instruments after that. The rest just depends on who breaks what part or finds a problem with a part.

The tips and control surfaces could also sell pretty well. All the hangar ding items or in my case the ailerons are only .0016 skins so they ended up with hail damage but the rest of the airplane is ok. Look for factory shoulder harness kits, aftermarket parts, parts which were added later for SB and AD compliance not supported by Piper anymore.

Try to find out if any airframe is a late 1960 or 1961G model. There are a lot of parts specific to the G (higher gear and flap speed limits and other airspeed limits)

N44XXP N number range probably I could look up the serial number range.