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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 aligning
the pulley’s and belt, sorting out the fuel
solenoid, which was stuck shut, the turbine fired up
and ran well, even though it had been stood for
nearly two years.
A couple of ground runs to check the belt were running
true 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.
