Pascal

hi
i recently found an ad on a german UL marketplace page of a guy who is offering a rotax 912uls with roughly 400hrs tt and 18 smoh in 2011 out of an airplane that had a heavy fuselage damage. the pictures look like they show the front of an avid or maybe a kitfox with that engine on it. he offers the engine plus all accessories even including the whole engine monitoring for 7k € which is a reasonable price i think..
i contacted him with some questions, also asked if this was off an avid since i'm looking for not only the engine but the entire firewall forward kit including mount and cowling.  he confirmed it was actuayll from an avid and he could sell me the whole package.
i asked if he had any paperwork documenting the engine and the overhaul and he replied and told me in order to avoid a long forth and back via email with questions and answers, i should send him 2500€ and he will send me the engine with paperwork and all accessories etc. so i can test fit it to my aircraft and if i'm happy i can pay the rest and keep it.. that's when it started to get a sour taste
googled for one of the images of the engine in the add and found the same add with the same contact details also on a french ul forum. there it also had a phone number.. i googled the phone number and found numerous other ad's in that french forum with the same phone number but different email addresses and names... so that looks even more like a scammer's work ..
since the engine supposedly hung on an avid i thaught maybe there is somehone here who knows the guy and can actually deny that this is just a scam artist trying to rip me off.. i really would like to believe that i've found the entire FWF for an avid flyer to mount a 912 .. that would just be too sweet
so if anyone here knows a guy named christian Roques who lives in calvi (corsica) and owns a crashed Avid flyer, please speak up..
in any case i have offered him to come up with a list of exactly which documents i need and then ask him once for all those documents, so he can send me a scan or photo of thos and once they check out i would fly to corsica, visually inspect the goods and pay him in full and even help him to remove it from the fuselage before i load it and bring it back home.. his answer was "ok" so that gives me hope again  
 i've attached two images of the engine he has in the ad. does that look like an avid flyer to you?

Hi all
I am currently looking at an Avid Heavy Hauler Model C kit purchased in 1990 and almost completely built. however it has been sitting in a basement for the last 20 years in its unfinished state and has been collecting quite some dust over time. So in order to finish it I would probably need to take alot apart just to clean it all out and replace things like 30 year old fuel lines and such.
I have a few questions to thos of you flying these beautiful little aircrafts. but before i start with my questions, here is why I think the Avid Hauler might be a great Aircraft for me:
I live in Switzerland and therefore like flying in our Alps. Especially in the winter when the Glaciers are covered in snow i would like to have an airplane with Ski's that can take me to the glaciers for some touch and go's and some landings. I've been doing this so far with a Jodel (100hp, 750kg MOTM and pretty close to MTOM with the skis attached and 2 people inside with full tanks for a day of joy) which i would consider being at the lower end performance wise as it is neither a real STOL airplane nor is it particularily powerful. I think the Avid Hauler with its slow stall speed and light weight might be more ideal for this kind of flying.
Now here are my questions:
- the Kit is equipped with a silver head rotax 582 which was purchased together with the kit in 1990 and has run a few times in the meantime.. for as much as I konw about engines, this engine can be considered dead and in need of at least an overhaul probably requirign lots of parts due to corrosion damage. Is it even worth overhauling such an engine or am i better of buying a new one? If new, could I at least keep the gearbox, carbs, starter, oil injection and exhaust from the unused but old engine?
- is a 582 powerful enough to get the avid up into the alps and take off from snow covered glaciers (with a downhill slope of course) at about 9 to 10k ft?
- everything except for the later added MK IV cowling is already painted but the paint job is really ugly (looks like a candle, and the color looks more like that of a layer of primer). is it possible to re-paint the aircraft or will I damage the fabric covering for sure when slightly sanding the current paint job for better adhesion? also how much weight would a second paint job add to the airplane?
- are there any pilots in this forum with a similarly equipped (rotax 582) Hauler who live near or actually in switzerland and would take me up for a test ride so i can get a feeling of what the finished airplane would be like?
- i am 6ft (1.83m) tall and when i sat into the airplane down in the cellar i noticed that I had about 2-3cm of air over my head. I have to say that the seat cussion was just laying on the bottom of the fuselage, so this is not going to get better when it is properly mounted.. I thought i could maybe form the acrylic glass of the roof section a bit and create two "dents" to add some headroom for the pilot and passenger.. has anybody done something like that before?
- is there any source to get a set of skis? sadly the current onwer did not order skis with his kit.
that's about it for now.. i am currently trying to estimate the work and more importantly the funds required to get that avid flying finally.
cheers
Pascal