First Plane purchase C-140

[dragonfly]

Good afternoon ladies and Gents. I am here to grasp as much knowledge as I can before my purchase. With god saying the same, I want to buy a 140 either towards the end of 2022 or in the year of 2023. I have my sights on owning a 140 with metal wings and this will be my first plane ownership. I was wanting to know what are some things I should be looking for and questions to ask that is specific to the 140 during the purchasing process. I am an A&P but have only work on Helicopters for my stint as a mechanic. Currently, I am a commercial Helicopter pilot flying Single Pilot IFR Helicopters in the EMS industry and obvious have a private pilot fixed wing license with and instrument add on. Also, have my Multi comm/inst too. Any info would be appreciated. Looking forward to joing the 120/140 community as I want to get back to the barebones of aviation flying. Tired of all these pretty screens in my face. LOL

Brody

[maverick_fa]

Here is a good video showing some weakness points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4CRxRobrTI

[dragonfly]

Thanks matt.

[meloosifah]

1. Metal wings are heavy and 140’s are more fun light.
2. High time or training time - check the gear boxes for heavy landing cracks.
3. Weight listed is probably not actual. Every one I looked at had poor W/B.
4. Check the records - several posts on here of owners not being able to chase down paperwork for mods done in the past.

Just a few thoughts. For me, light/simple/original/basic is much more fun.

[a64pilot]

Get your IA it will help quite a bit.

In my opinion as a metal wing owner, there just isn’t a lot of difference in weight, I’d bet some common mods like 150 seats and mufflers add as much weight, Depends on how they were metallized, if the drag braces are still there then that does add weight but removal of them decreases additional weight, I believe some STC’s removed them and some didn’t.

You can most likely pretty much kill almost any 140 over paperwork as in finding something that’s not documented, so don’t go overboard, but if it has different seats and exhaust I’d want a copy of that field approval or STC. I think a whole lot of seats were just done with no documentation, same with the exhausts, other mods are usually not so obvious.

As an IA you can weigh it and compute a W&B if you want to, but in my opinion a C-85 140 runs out of performance before it gets structurally overloaded.
People will argue different but if you get fabric wings, get a hangar before you get the airplane, I’d advise that for any aircraft anyway, but especially fabric.
Find out what it cost to have wings recovered and I think you will know why the condition and age of the fabric is very important.

My personal opinion is to try to find as original a 140 as you can. probably lighter and less concerns about approvals AD’s etc.
O-200 may be nice I guess, I’ve not flown one, but wonder about the shorter prop and higher RPM? I think my choice would be a C-90 if possible?
I’m an old fat guy living in Fl and my C-85 with cruise prop does just fine, just have to remember it’s no bush plane and respect it's limitations.

You could do a lot worse than a 140. Wherever you go in a 150/152, your flying an old beat up trainer, a 140 is of course just as much a trainer, but it’s old enough that it’s now considered a classic. Cubs and Champs are so slow you can’t go anywhere really, not that a 140 is a traveling machine but compared to a cub it’s fast.

[edidin]

Cubs and Champs are so slow you can’t go anywhere really, not that a 140 is a traveling machine but compared to a cub it’s fast.

Just took a C120 from NY to TX, goes the other way in two months. So you can go somewhere, but better have a little time. Very light on controls, so easy to fly for a long time.

Have flown both metal and fabric 120/140 and there's a "feel" in the fabric ones that's rather nice. Neither version wants to be outside really.

Of the three motors experienced, the C-85, the Stroker, and the O-200, the Stroker seems to provide the best feeling.