lucky52 wrote:
Do you all think all that salt water will ruin the airframe for future flight?
No, but it's going to be very expensive and lengthy to get it back to airworthy condition. Numerous warbirds have been exposed to salt water and flown again, but most of the time it takes, in effect, a completely new rebuild just to ensure all of the salt water is gone. Nearly every single component of this aircraft has to be broken down, cleaned, treated and removed of all contaminants to ensure no salt residue, which is extremely corrosive, remains.
The Collings Foundation Corsair ditched in the ocean a few decades back and I believe it took about 5 to 6 years to get it airworthy again. Even in that amount of time, the restoration had the strong financial backing/resources of Collings. I believe that VAC's Avenger had been undergoing restoration for about 20 years to get it airworthy. When you consider the amount of time and effort it will take to get this airworthy again, it might be cheaper just to sell this waterlogged one and buy an already restored airworthy TBM.
The former Lone Star Flight Museum F3F "Flying Barrel", which never ditched in the ocean, was exposed to salt water from the tidal surge during the Hurricane that hit Texas a while back. It ended up being a multi-year re-restoration which effectively started from scratch, even though it was an almost new aircraft with limited hours. IIRC, it went through several owners, until finally flying again. These types of projects require somebody with either deep pockets or much technical know-how in order to keep the "re-restoration" costs low. Unless the aircraft is very rare/valuable, most of the time, the cost to re-restore after exposure to ocean water exceeds the value of the aircraft.
Avengers are about the cheapest "big iron" warbird you can obtain now. From what I've observed, airworthy ones have been for sale recently anywhere from about 275K to 650K. I'm guessing that a new airworthy restoration of this ditched one will far exceed that cost, imo.
Best of luck to VAC and hopefully this aircraft can be rebuilt at some time with someone who has the resources to give it what it deserves.