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New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2017 5:51 pm
by DA40KPAO
After a few weeks of very stressful negotiation, investigation, expensive repairs, etc. I am a first time aircraft owner and bought a 2007 DA40. It's still nerve wrecking having to spend so much on an airplane. She'll be placed at a flight club in Palo Alto.

The routing we flew was much longer than we wanted due to weather and terrain. Departed Salt Lake City with a stop in Las Vegas and finally arriving Palo Alto. We had strong wind (20 to 30 kts) for most of the way which made the trip slower than we'd like.

Excited to have another DA40 in Palo Alto, I think these are one of the best multi-purpose planes in the market.

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2017 6:06 pm
by BlueYonder
Welcome to the club! I bought my 2007 (40.838) almost exactly a year ago, and flew her home from suburban Memphis to Seattle a year ago next week. It was a terrific adventure, though those headwinds going east to west did make for slow going.

She's still a joy to fly, though she's spent an annoying amount of this first year in the shop for one thing and another.

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2017 8:23 pm
by DA40KPAO
BlueYonder wrote:Welcome to the club! I bought my 2007 (40.838) almost exactly a year ago, and flew her home from suburban Memphis to Seattle a year ago next week. It was a terrific adventure, though those headwinds going east to west did make for slow going.

She's still a joy to fly, though she's spent an annoying amount of this first year in the shop for one thing and another.
After the purchase, we did an annual and had to fix quite a few items that weren't caught as part of the pre-buy. Hopefully she'll not need a lot of work going forward.

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2017 8:41 pm
by BlueYonder
I'm told that these first-year repair flurries are pretty typical. Often, planes are sold after they've been sitting a while (though not in my case), or because the owner can't really afford steady upkeep. Even a little bit of this will result in a raft of repairs for the new owner.

There's also the fact that our 2007s are now a decade old, and stuff's just plain starting to wear out. A lot of my issues this year have come out of this bucket -- even though the plane only has about 900 hours on it. It was still running on the original battery, for example. One of the fuel senders died. The magnetos were due for a rebuild (which caused follow-on problems for the next few months). There was a cracked exhaust collector that had to be replaced. None of this stuff was caught in the pre-buy; more of it arose in the annual I had done four months later. More recently, there are glitches in the Garmin; finding a shop that was competent to cope with those has taken much of this year, but they're on track to getting fixed now.

Ah, the joys of ownership. They're not unlike the joys of parenthood: it requires a lot of work and an endless supply of patience, and the things that can go wrong will never cease to astonish you. But when it all goes right, there's absolutely nothing on earth like it, and you remember all over again why you put up with the hard parts.

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 4:03 am
by avalys
Excellent! I've been flying the two DA40's at WVFC at KPAO. I assume this will be the third, or is it going to the other club?

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Thu Dec 07, 2017 8:25 am
by DA40KPAO
avalys wrote:Excellent! I've been flying the two DA40's at WVFC at KPAO. I assume this will be the third, or is it going to the other club?
This is going to Advantage Aviation as their 3rd ;)

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2017 5:42 pm
by gordsh
Congrats Victor, always happy to hear of new DA40 acquisitions.

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 5:18 pm
by Hans
That is unfortunate.....I purchased a 2004 DA-40 with 110hrs on it in 2013 and really have not had a lot of problems with it, a couple of fixes here and there but nothing major to speak of....what were the problems, just curious ?

Hans

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2018 3:55 pm
by Pascal
I feel your pain Victor!

I purchased my 1999 DA20-C1 last April and so far have sunk 20k$ in repairs/upgrades on it, including a new MT propeller, a used bubble canopy with no cracks in it, new rudder cables, new RPM instrument, new bolts/washers/grummets for the 5000 hour inspection, new tire, brake pads, new LED landing and taxi lights, new landing pucks etc.

And I haven't even started to work on the cosmetics or avionics upgrades (the DG is drifting too much to my liking so I see a G5 or an Aspen PFD in the future, and maybe a GNS 430W).

Was it worth it? To me it was. I now have an airplane which is up-to-date mechanically and which hopefully can go another ten years without major mechanical problems until engine overhaul.

Re: New Diamond DA40 Owner

Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 8:17 pm
by DA40KPAO
Hans wrote:That is unfortunate.....I purchased a 2004 DA-40 with 110hrs on it in 2013 and really have not had a lot of problems with it, a couple of fixes here and there but nothing major to speak of....what were the problems, just curious ?

Hans
There were several relatively more expensive repairs. The most critically one was the two magnetos. The previous owner and his mechanic didn't bother with the magnetos inspection and resulted in the magnetos being excessively worn. That was discovered during annual. The previous mechanic was defending on how he has done more Diamond maintenance than anyone in the world and claimed there were no issues. However, after sending pictures to several other independent mechanics, they all said the two magnetos are in such bad shape that they could cause safety issues.

One of the rear door hinges was also a concern which required repair. So that needed to be done.

And a number of other items, relatively minor in comparison, needed to be repaired. Those add up.

Next on the list is ADS-B compliance which I'm still researching.

I should have been a bit more aggressive on the pricing negotiation to cover the additional repair costs.

Overall it's a good learning experience for me in terms of buying the airplane. No regret thus far on buying the plane and I've started by IFR lessons in her :)