I just have to laugh at some of the figures that people say you can build RVs for...often ridiculously low numbers that don’t reflect reality.
How do they arrive at these bargain basement numbers. Well, they just leave out a lot of the real outlays.
Often they have no realistic budget for an interior. And no budget for the painting (look, if it ain’t painted it ain’t finished). They have no budget whatsoever for countless and endless almost daily hardware purchases eg epoxy resins, fibreglass cloth, sandpaper, safety glasses, masks, solvents, brushes, etc etc. They have no budget for building tools which will be many thousands of dollars. They have no budget for the specialised tools required to do the wiring. And finally they have no budget for the maintenance tools ultimately required to maintain the aircraft (you are going to time your magnetos and check your compression aren’t you?). And don’t give me the cr@p about it doesn’t count as part of the cost of building if it isn’t fitted to the plane. The cost of tools and sundry items is as much a cost of building as the avionics. If you buy the plane already built you don’t need the tools.
Then there’s the cost of builder’s insurance as you build. It’s not compulsory but if you have over a $100k sitting in your garage and it’s not covered by your home insurance you run a huge risk by not having it. Then there’s taxes, kit transport costs, then the cost of transporting the aircraft to an airport, then the cost of hangarage while you complete the final assembly. Then there’s all the purchases of third party items that you ultimately realise along the way that you just cannot do without....the anti splat nose job, the gust lock, the fabric fuselage cover, etc etc....it’s truly endless. Then there’s the upgrade items to Vans kits....upgrade the alternator, upgrade the oil cooler, upgrade the engine mounts, upgrade the air vents.
In the end the only people who really know what it costs to build an RV are those that have meticulously and truthfully totalled up every single dollar that they have spend on the aircraft. The rest are just guessing or living in wishful thinking land.
When I was building my RV7 I had a very good friend who was building a virtually identically equipped RV7 at the same time. I kept meticulous documentation on every single dollar I spent and he said he didn’t want to know what it was costing him (because it made him nervous and also so he didn't have to lie to his wife ha ha ha). When I was $140k into my project I asked him how much he thought he had spent on his (virtually identical progress) and he said he thought about $90k. That’s how far out builders can be when they really don’t want to know the hard truth.