Dan208B
Well-Known Member
Anyone on here have any experience with beaver rebuilds/restorations/maintenance or know anyone that does? I bought a DHC-2 Mk1 project and am struggling a bit to decide exactly what to do with it. I'm located in NW Washington State and have had full day visits with Kenmore Air in Seattle and Sealand Aviation in Campbell River, B.C. Options thus far:
-Give airplane to Kenmore or Sealand for full rebuild (very expensive)
-Do rebuild myself but outsource as much as possible, sending various parts to experts and hiring some local help as well (cheaper but time consuming)
-Do entire project myself (likely won't do because I'm fairly time limited)
-Buy/sell/trade/repair some of the parts I have, inventory things, and resell project for 3x my purchase price (Kenmore estimate)
I suppose I'm posting here just in hopes that someone has some thoughts and suggestions for this. The project is a little daunting. This will be my 4th airplane I've owned and a Beaver has always been my #1 choice for a personal aircraft but the $750k+ airplanes seemed unrealistic for me even long-term. So when this came along I had to jump on it. I've been advised by multiple people that Beavers can get difficult and expensive quickly between figuring out paperwork and STCs and finding parts, etc. Can't really go wrong with any options but looking for general restoration advice and certainly any Beaver/DHC specific stuff. Thanks!
-Give airplane to Kenmore or Sealand for full rebuild (very expensive)
-Do rebuild myself but outsource as much as possible, sending various parts to experts and hiring some local help as well (cheaper but time consuming)
-Do entire project myself (likely won't do because I'm fairly time limited)
-Buy/sell/trade/repair some of the parts I have, inventory things, and resell project for 3x my purchase price (Kenmore estimate)
I suppose I'm posting here just in hopes that someone has some thoughts and suggestions for this. The project is a little daunting. This will be my 4th airplane I've owned and a Beaver has always been my #1 choice for a personal aircraft but the $750k+ airplanes seemed unrealistic for me even long-term. So when this came along I had to jump on it. I've been advised by multiple people that Beavers can get difficult and expensive quickly between figuring out paperwork and STCs and finding parts, etc. Can't really go wrong with any options but looking for general restoration advice and certainly any Beaver/DHC specific stuff. Thanks!