Flyingalpine
I have seen a lot of utter rubbish on this forum but your post about engineers is by far the biggest load of utter bull that I have ever seen.
I have yet to see a rich engineer in the GA business largely because cheap skates like you won't pay more that £40/hour for labour and put off prevenative maintenance because of cost and then squeel like stuck piggs when the aircraft gets to such a state that all the work has to be done at once.
Most people selling aircraft do so when they can no longer afford to keep it, this sneeks up on them and as a result they have not spent enough on the aircraft upkeep and the next owner buys the last three years worth of problems that have been stored up.
IO540 is correct about old aircraft, they cost a lot of money to put right, in my opinion to put an aircraft back into tip-top condition (new engine,paint,radios and the like) it will cost about 1.5x the perchase price.
As for the closed shop that is totaly untrue if you have a problem away from base most engineering companys would try to help if they can but you can't expect them to to drop the urgent work on a regular customers aircraft for someone who has just walked in the door.
rant over !!