Cessna 210M/N Centurion II (1977-1984)

The specifications on this page describe the Model 210N (1979-1984), which is 1,943 of the 3,325 serials in Sections XIV and XVI of FAA TCDS 3A21 — 58%. That is a thin majority and it is said out loud: the 1977-1978 210M is a Variants-table row with its own figures, and on one limit — maximum structural cruising speed — the 210M is actually the higher of the two, so this page is not quietly flattering the variant it describes.

The 210M and 210N are the mature, final-production normally aspirated Centurion II. The 210M (1977-1978) introduced a redesigned landing gear system with an electric motor driving the hydraulic pump in place of the engine-driven pump of earlier 210s. The 210N (1979-1984) carried it forward and, from its first year, deleted the main gear doors entirely — which Cessna's own Bill Thompson attributes to a cost-reduction program, and which turned out to remove several of the type's most persistent failure points.

Two date corrections a returning reader should know about.

Production ran to 1984 on this page, not 1986. The 210N's last eligible serial is 21064897, a 1984 model. Serial 21064898 begins the 210R — a different section of the certificate, with a wingspan extended two feet to 38 ft 10 in, a widened horizontal stabilizer, a 3,850 lb gross weight and 87 usable gallons standard. The 1985 and 1986 normally aspirated Centurions are 210Rs and this catalogue has no page for them.

And there was no four-year production hiatus. This page previously said the 210M "launched after a 4-year production hiatus" covering 1973-1976. 3A21's own serial list has the 210L in continuous production through the 1976 model year, ending at serial 21061573, with the 210M starting at 21061574. The line did not stop.

Counted from the certificate: 1,382 serials for the 210M/T210M (1977-1978) and 1,943 for the 210N/T210N (1979-1984). 3A21 issues one sequence for the normally aspirated and turbocharged airplanes together, so those figures include the T210M and T210N and are quoted that way rather than split on a guess.

The 1977 gear system redesign

The 210M introduced a redesigned landing gear system:

• Engine-driven hydraulic pump removed (eliminates pump shaft seal failures, drive train wear)
• Electric motor drives hydraulic pump on demand (only when gear is operated)
• Improved power pack design (cleaner valve geometry, better thermal management)
• Strengthened gear actuators

The electric-motor system is dramatically more reliable than the engine-driven system. SDR data shows 60-70% reduction in gear-related squawks from pre-1977 to post-1977 production.

The 1979 Gear Door Deletion

In 1979, Cessna deleted the main landing gear doors entirely. Earlier 210s had doors that closed over the retracted main gear to clean up the airflow; these doors required their own valves, linkages, and switches, all of which were failure-prone.

Deleting the doors:

• Eliminated gear door valves and linkages (multiple failure points removed)
• Reduced gear retraction/extension time
• Marginal aerodynamic penalty (~2-3 KTAS cruise)
• Simplified annual inspections
• Reduced overhaul costs

For buyers, 1979+ "doorless" 210Ns are the most desirable single Centurion variant -- best gear reliability, no major valuation penalty for the cosmetic difference.

Every figure below is from FAA TCDS 3A21 Rev. 50. All airspeed limits in this section are INDICATED, not calibrated — this generation is where the certificate changes basis.

The bold row is what the frontmatter describes. Three things to read off it:

• The 210M's maximum structural cruising speed is 168 knots, three above the 210N's 165. The certificate does not move consistently in one direction across these two airplanes, which is worth knowing when a page has to pick one of them to describe.
• The 210M's own two blocks split almost exactly in half — 700 airframes against 682, 51% to 49% — and they differ only in flaps-extended speed (105 against 115) and gear-extended speed (140 against 199). Runbook rule 23 takes the lower figure on a majority that thin, which is why the table shows the early 210M at Vfe 105.
• Fuel falls from 89 to 87 usable at serial 21064536. 3A21 NOTE 1 explains it: unusable fuel rises from "6 lb. at (+23)" to "18 lb. at (+38)". 1,581 of the 1,943 210N serials (81%) are in the 89-gallon block, so 89 is what the frontmatter carries.

What actually separates a 210M from a 210N

Nothing in docs/CATALOG-SPLITTING-RULE.md separates them: same seats, same gear, same engine, same certificate, same gross weight, and fuel differing by two gallons. They share a page and the page says which airplane its numbers describe.

The 1979 gear door deletion

In 1979 Cessna deleted the main landing gear doors. Cessna Flyer quotes Bill Thompson's Cessna: Wings for the World: "In 1979 a cost-reduction program led to the elimination of the main gear doors and associated actuators and priority valves."

What went with the doors were their valves, linkages and switches — several of the failure points that give the earlier 210 gear system its reputation. The aerodynamic penalty is small and the maintenance saving is not, which is why 1979-and-later doorless 210Ns are the most sought-after normally aspirated Centurion.

The cruise, burn, range, climb and runway distances on this page now come from the airplane's own book. The document is the 1979 Model 210N Information Manual, P/N D1151-13, which reproduces the Pilot's Operating Handbook and FAA Approved Airplane Flight Manual and carries information through Revision 5 of 5 April 1982. Section 2 of it states the airplane outright: "Your Cessna is certificated under FAA Type Certificate No. 3A21 as Cessna Model No. 210N."

It covers 1979 of a page that runs 1979 to 1984, and the 210M (1977-1978) is a Variants row rather than a described airplane. Say so when quoting these figures at a 1983 airplane.

The one flight this page describes

6,000 ft is not an arbitrary choice. It is the only altitude in the whole six-sheet cruise grid with a published row at exactly 75% power, which is the GAMA reference setting this catalogue quotes everywhere. Above about 6,400 ft the Range Profile's 75% line becomes "2550 RPM — FULL THROTTLE", because a normally aspirated engine simply cannot hold 75% any higher. That is the whole difference between this airplane and its turbocharged twin, and it is why the T210N is quoted at 20,000 ft: comparing 171 knots to that airplane's 193 without both altitudes attached compares two different flights.

The range figures are read off a graph, and the reading was checked first. Figure 5-8 plots range against altitude as four power lines rather than tabulating it. Section 5 of the same manual works an example that states "use of 65% power at 7500 feet yields a predicted range of 930 nautical miles"; the same measurement, taken the same way, reads 933 nm there. So the method is good to about three nautical miles on this chart, which is why the 855 and 925 above are given as approximate rather than to the mile.

One thing the range chart gets right that the certificate could not. It is drawn for 534 lb usable fuel, which is exactly the 89 gallons this page stores — unlike the turbocharged sibling, whose handbook chart is for 87.

What the handbook corrected

Three of those — the climb rate, the glide speed and the empty weight — were borrowed from a different airplane on the same certificate, which is the error this catalogue exists to end and which no gate could have caught.

The stall speeds are confirmed twice over. Figure 5-3 at the most forward CG and 3,800 lb gives 57 KIAS in the landing configuration and 69 clean, and Section 2's airspeed indicator markings independently place the white arc at 57-115 and the green at 69-165, stating in the manual's own words that those lower limits are the maximum-weight Vs0 and the forward-CG Vs.

The service ceiling is the one figure still missing

The catalogue carried 17,300 ft, which traced to nothing. It now carries 15,500 ft, and that is AOPA's figure for the 1972 210L, not the 210N — flagged as an exemption rather than quietly stored.

The reason is worth recording, because it is a specific and fixable gap. A Cessna Information Manual prints the service ceiling on its PERFORMANCE - SPECIFICATIONS page, page ii. The only free copy of the 210N manual found runs cover (page iii), table of contents (page iv), Section 1 — pages i and ii were never scanned. No chart in Section 5 states a ceiling, and a type certificate never does. A complete copy of D1151-13, or any 1980-1984 printing (D1186-13PH and D1207-13PH are named on 3A21 NOTE 4), settles it in one line.

The 210L and 210N share an engine, a gross weight, a wing and a fuel system, so 15,500 ft is a defensible stand-in; it is simply not this airplane's published number, and the page should not pretend otherwise.

The whole cruise grid and both climb tables are stored

data/vault/performance/cessna-210m-n.cruise.json holds all six sheets of Figure 5-7 — 2,000 to 12,000 ft, 123 rows, standard-temperature column — and .climb.json holds Figure 5-5 and both sheets of Figure 5-6, including the handbook's own fuel-planning constants: a 12 lb start/taxi/takeoff allowance and a 44 lb reserve based on 45 minutes at 45% BHP. That is what lets this site answer "what will it burn at 8,000 ft at 65%" from the chart (14.5 gph at 164 knots) rather than from a guess.

The airspeed limits are INDICATED, and that is new

3A21 Section XVI heads the 210N block *Airspeed Limits (IAS) and prints knots alone with no miles-per-hour column at all. Every earlier 210 page in this catalogue carries certificate figures on a calibrated basis with that fact recorded; this generation is where the certificate switches, and the stored _kias values are genuinely what the schema field says they are.

AOPA's fact sheet makes the same switch at the same point, printing KIAS for the 210R and KCAS for the 1972 210L.

The stored vne_kias: 200 was right by coincidence. 200 was carried on every 210 page in this catalogue, where it was the 1960 Model 210's miles per hour never-exceed. Here the airplane really is limited to 200 knots. The other three were wrong: Vno was 170 against a stated 165, Va 131 against 125, and Vfe was absent.

Gear speeds

165 knots to operate the gear and 200 knots with it extended — the highest gear-extended limit on any normally aspirated 210 before the 210R, and a real operational difference from the 139 knots of the 1970s airplanes. The catalogue has no vlo/vle field, so the limits live here.

The runway distances, and the defect that used to be here

This section used to warn that landing_ground_roll_ft: 765 and landing_over_50ft_ft: 1500 were shared verbatim with three sibling 210 pages and — for the 765 — with a 7,255 lb Daher Kodiak, and that they were therefore placeholders that should not be used to decide whether an airplane fits a runway. They are not placeholders. They are the published figures.

The reason the 210 pages share them is prosaic: Cessna publishes the same landing chart for the normally aspirated and the turbocharged airplane, and both land at 3,800 lb. Figure 5-10 gives 725 ft / 1,440 ft at 0°C and 780 / 1,520 at 20°C, so the standard-day figure between them is 765 / 1,500 — which is exactly what the T210N's Section 1 prints. The Kodiak sharing 765 ft remains a real defect, on the Kodiak's page.

Conditions: 3,800 lb, flaps 30°, power off, maximum braking, paved level dry runway, zero wind, short-field technique, 72 KIAS over the fifty-foot obstacle. Add 40% to the ground roll on dry grass, and 35% more again if you have to land with the flaps up.

Takeoff is 1,250 ft of ground roll and 2,030 ft over a 50-foot obstacle at 3,800 lb, sea level, standard day, flaps 10°, 2850 rpm. Neither runway chart prints a 15°C column, so both figures are the midpoint of the published 10°C and 20°C columns. That is not an assumption dressed as a source: on the turbocharged sibling, whose Section 1 summary survives, all four of Cessna's own standard-day figures are the midpoint of its own 10°C and 20°C columns to within three feet, so the midpoint is demonstrably how Cessna derives them.

The 1979-and-later doorless 210N trades above equivalent 210Ms with doors. Late 210Ns (1983-1984) trade highest for "last of the line" status — though the genuine last normally aspirated Centurions are the 1985 and 1986 210Rs, which are a different airplane on a longer wing and have no page here yet.

The price band on this page is legacy and unsourced, and it was written for a run believed to end in 1986.

210 universal concerns apply. M/N-specific:

1. Power pack overhaul status: The redesigned electric-motor system still requires periodic overhaul. Budget $3,000-$5,000 if overdue.
2. Cessna SIDs: 1977-1986 airframes are 40-49 years old; SID compliance is a real cost item. Full SID inspection: $5,000-$15,000.
3. Engine cylinder condition: IO-520-L still prone to cylinder cracking. Borescope inspection essential.
4. Pre-1979 door history: the 1977 and 1978 airplanes are 210Ms and they have gear doors. Review the logs for door valve and actuator replacements — chronic door problems are a major red flag, and they are the parts Cessna deleted in 1979.
5. Check the serial against the fuel placard. From S/N 21064536 (1982 model) usable fuel falls from 89 gallons to 87, because unusable fuel rises from 6 lb to 18 lb. Two gallons is about fifteen minutes.
6. Check the serial against the airspeed placard too. A 1977 210M is limited to 140 knots gear-extended; a 1978 one to 199; a 210N to 200. These are not the same airplane to fly an approach in.
7. Late-model avionics: 1983-1984 original panels carry 1980s avionics that are now obsolete. Plan $25,000-$50,000 for panel modernization.