Guys pick up abandoned $300K plane from Michigan sight unseen and worry it's been a 'horrible mistake'

This team of restoration gurus picked up a $300K abandoned plane from Michigan without ever laying eyes on it, but when they finally came face-to-face with it, they realised what a ‘horrible mistake’ it was.

If you were ever lucky enough to drop six figures on a vehicle, you’d bet your bottom dollar that it would be in pristine condition.

But not these lads.

Rebuild Rescue, a team of aviation experts, spent $150k on an abandoned plane in the hope that they could turn it around for a $300k sale. But it turned out to be quite a horror show.

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The team over at Rebuild Rescue has been undergoing some wild plane transformations, documenting every wrench, crank, and wire snag on their YouTube channel.

Just last month, they managed to pull a dirt-loaded Piper Comanche 250 out from its New York grave and get it airborne for a return trip to Pennsylvania.

One of the biggest projects they faced, though, was this $300k abandoned plane from Michigan.

The team blindly splashed $150k on the purchase of this 2003 Cirrus SR22, which only had 514 hours airborne before being grounded since 2013.

Still, if they couldn’t fix it, nobody could. So let the pain and restoration gain begin.

At first inspection, the plane was obviously in a bad way, but that was to be expected for an aircraft that had been grounded for a decade.

Most of the exterior issues are an easy restoration fix with a paintbrush and TLC.

But under its bonnet was the big snag, as they went in completely blind.

“Oh man, that is the worst I’ve ever seen,” host Jason Morrison said after getting the hood off behind the propeller.

“This thing is so bad. I can’t believe someone would let this airplane get this way. So bad.

“Looking at this, it makes me upset in a way, but also makes me a little bit happy. If we weren’t here doing this, the plane would have kept going until it was junk.

“Chances are, we came in at the right time. I don’t know who else would have saved it at this point and would be crazy enough to do that.”

However bad the ‘horrible mistake’ was, the Rebuild Rescue duo still followed through on their plegde to get this plane back on track, and commenced in the first step of its restoration: the removal of the ‘poop cement’ build-up.

Leaking windows led to a completely moldy and muggy interior, and mechanical issues mounted with the fuel exhaustion system and engine failures.

Yet the engine did run, eventually, breathing life into the old banger.

What turned out to be one of the worst-looking planes that they’d ever come across became a salvageable and rescuable vessel.

In an update five months later, the abandoned plane succeeded in getting a second shot at life, taking to the skies from its Michigan hangar for the first time in 14 years.

The duo predicts that they could get up to $300k for the restored plane.

Not all of the Rebuild Rescue projects end with fairytale stories, though.

One of the biggest undertakings was a ‘free’ Cessna 401A, but after years of efforts to be airborne again, they had to shelve the project to build up funds again.

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