Walked into a Cessna 172 yesterday that looked completely different from 6 months ago

The panel went from a rat's nest of old King radios to a slick Garmin stack and I swear the wiring looked better than my home network. Who else has seen a plane go from junk to showroom in under a year?

3 comments

3 Comments

reeseperez11d ago

And honestly, that's probably true for a lot of these older 172s. I saw a guy put a full Garmin G500TXi setup in a 1970s 172M last year and he told me the avionics alone were pushing 40 grand. The plane was worth maybe 35k before. But here's the thing, once you start peeling back that old wiring you find all sorts of corrosion and chafed insulation you didn't know about, so the labor ends up being way more than you planned. It's wild to see a 50 year old bird with a brand new nervous system though.

scott.miles11d ago

Tbh that line about "50 year old bird with a brand new nervous system" is exactly it. I saw a 1977 172R that got a Garmin G1000 NXi retrofit and the panel literally looked like something from a new Cirrus. But here's the kicker, the owner told me he found a mouse nest behind the old panel when they pulled it out. All that new wiring and nobody ever checked behind the old stuff. Real talk, half the value of these upgrades is just fixing all the hidden crap you don't see until you tear it apart.

dakota_patel9811d ago

I mean, maybe it's just me but that panel upgrade probably cost more than the airplane itself did six months ago. Guess someone's home network budget went somewhere else.