Taylorcraft model help

[Colonel]

You need two things:

1) good enough paper
2) good enough mechanicals

Don't let a shiny paint job overlook either of the above, which can be amazingly decoupled.

Expect to look at 10 aircraft before you find a decent one, close enough to what you want.

Free advice: have an AME with no conflict of interest, look at the airplane for you. Preferably
the one that is going to be doing the annuals for you. Personally, I want him to do an annual
as the pre-purchase inspection. He's going to have a laundry list of "must have" maintenance
items. Take that to the buyer, and negotiate a new price.

Get the first annual out of the way. It's going to be a painful one. You wouldn't believe the
people who have bought say a "cheap" twin, spend the purchase price - or more - on the next
two annuals, trying to get it back into shape after the neglect of the previous owner, whom
usually didn't fly it much in his last few years of ownership. Possibly because he was dead.

The lesson here is what one AME will let slide, another will say is a "mandatory" airworthiness
item.

I'm always looking for damage. Damage from an (undocumented?) accident? Now, why did
you change that prop? Damage from aging in a corrosive environment? Damage from a
previous repair? Damage from a lack of lubrication of metal-on-metal, causing unnecessary
and expensive wear? Damage from flexing, causing cracking?

A Cessna on floats that has spent 20 years in the salt of the Caribbean is going to be totally
different than one that's been on wheels in a hangar in California, even if they left the factory
as the same model and year.

I remember a crankcase half on an ancient Contintenal - had to be 70 years old - suddenly
cracked on an owner. Now, why did that happen?

People manage to bend connecting rods on fuel injected Continentals. Now, how did that
happen?

Keep in mind that the people who designed and built this stuff, are long gone. Long since
retired, nearly all dead or drooling in nursing homes. If you told them in 1940 that people
would still be flying this stuff in 2020 they would have laughed their asses off. Preposterous.

Like warbirds. Operational WWII aircraft might have had a lifespan of 6 months. After
that, they were either turned into rubble on ops (possibly on the first day) or completely
obsolete. The people that designed and built them would have locked you up as a psycho,
if you told them that they would be flying 100 years later.