I do not understand anybody wanting to maintain a PA38 at any significant expense.
As an aircraft, it has nothing going for it.
Many instructors like it because it has a nasty stall characteristic and "teaches people to fly correctly". Somebody needs to remind me why (outside of aerobatics) we learn to fly?
It has plenty going for it, but I know better than to get in to an arguement about whether a Cessna is better or worse than a Piper, they're both good training planes because they are very tough and there is nothing that will match up in terms of toughness vs. cost. You spend £3k on a noseleg and the aircraft will give you till it's engine lifes, you could otherwise go out and spend 100k on a SportCruiser or an AT3 which might give you 2500 hours on a noseleg, but it remains to be seen
. Which is why we're still flying PA38s and C152s.
It doesn't have nasty stall characteristics though, it has a gentle wing drop which if taught correctly means that people wont get nervous if they get a wing drop on another type. The thing about stalling is that you're supposed to teach the recovery and you're also supposed to teach people to be calm when they recover, a point that is often missed on every type of trainer, not just this one
.