Damage history

[ShawnR]

Hypothetical question...

When looking at an RV (or any homebuilt/experimental)...when does an accident become irrelevant in your purchase?

hypothetical example... Accident was medium ...no fuselage bending, wings ok
Does 50 hours of proven flight time make it ok, 200, 500? No visible sign of damage ie repair was done very well. At what point would you look at the log book and say, the plane has proven itself since the bender.

Another way .... says 2 RV's...same average hours/instrumentation/engine
One had an accident but has flown 100 hours since and you cannot tell except for a log book entry. The other, no history of damage. How would you compare them? Would you say they are both valued the same? Since the original was built in a home shop, and rebuilt by the same person/friends, would it not make sense that an accident is irrelevant in valuating an aircraft?

One could argue that a Cessna/Piper leaves the factory and gets bent. It is then rebuilt at the level of craftsmanship of the individual doing the repair. But in the homebuilt world, often the repair person is one and the same as the builder, so, as good as "factory?"

Discuss...

 

[rvbuilder2002]

My opinion, is that flight hours since post accident repairs is irrelevant.
A badly executed repair can degrade strength of a particular portion of the air frame, but the airplane could be flown for many hundreds of hours and not exceed that reduction in load carrying ability.
I believe a much more important consideration is who did the repairs and then as a follow up to that, a very thorough pre-purchase inspection being done by someone with extensive RV experience. Preferably extensive experience on the exact model.

Additionally, buying any RV with no record of damage history is meaningless in telling you what quality that airplane is compared to one that does have damage history.
The airplane I own right now is a great example. The original builder who had the accident did a pretty good job building it but there were still numerous construction errors that I discovered during the extensive rebuild process.

In a nutshell… Every RV should be taken at face value based on a very thorough pre-purchase inspection.

 

[ShawnR]

Thanks Scott for the input

 

[Ed_Wischmeyer]

In my experience, no matter how good the pre-purchase, expect at least one major problem, EAB or factory built. Pre-purchase inspections are risk minimizers, not guarantees.

 

[spatsch]

There is also no legal requirement to log incidents or accidents or any repair for EAB airplanes so the fact that the log book shows no accident doesn’t mean a lot. That’s why pre buys are so important. You can ask the seller but unless he is the original owner he might not know either.

That’s one of many differences between EAB and certified airplanes.

Oliver

 

[David Z]

I have never understood the obsession with "no damage history". Every airplane will eventually get a dent or a ding somewhere. It's not the damage I care about, it's the repair. More-so than the repair is the overall quality of the airplane.

Was the aileron damaged when the builder dropped it during initial construction? Or did it bump into another plane that required it to be rebuilt?

Why would I care when a certain skin was riveted on, so long as it was done well?