An interesting project to say the very least........... I was contacted by Wren Turbines to see if I could help out one of their customers who had a Wren 54 turbine fitted in a Chinook airframe. The Chinook had quite a history with it and arrived in the workshop in a bit of a sorry state, the major parts of the drive train were in lots of bits in a cardboard box.
Chinook
There’s a big gap where there should be pulley’s and belts !
The drive train before it was reinstalled.
After machining some new brackets and aligningthe pulley’s and belt, sorting out the fuelsolenoid, which was stuck shut, the turbine fired upand ran well, even though it had been stood for nearly two years. A couple of ground runs to check the belt were runningtrue and the heli was ready for a test flight before being returned to the owner.The model was designed to fit inside the Vario Chinook fuselage.
It’s been quite a few years since we have had the Chinook in our workshop and the owner has now decided to have the fuselage fitted.The mechanics were originally designed to fit the Vario fuselage and fortunately they did with only a few slight modifications.Fuel pump and gas bottle had to be moved and so new brackets were made for those along with re machining a bearing holder which was catching the top of the fuselage.
The original fuel tank was very small so we installed two larger tanks.
The owner wanted the model to be a tribute to the late Dave Nuthall who built the original set of mechanics, so a colour scheme and registration were chosen accordingly.