Warbird Information Exchange

Any news on the engines? I'd like to know how much the rebuild place is charging for the work being done?
How many engines are they working on right now?
Are they located near the field where FiFi is?
What is the time frame for the installation and check out?

Well, like I mentioned roughly a week ago, the progress on the first engine is coming along. I could spend an hour describing each detail that's been worked on, but I just don't have the time for that at this point. Sorry. But progress is happening. NOTHING happens fast in the engine building world (at least until engguy starts building them), so try to remain patient with us on the updates. They're not going to be as frequent as the B-24 thread we took part in.

How much money? Well, that remains to be seen. However, we're budgeting for $150,000 per engine. They may cost more, they may cost less. That was a good average to guess on.

Right now, only one engine is being built. Upon completion, we will place it on our engine run up trailer and put some time on it. If we've somehow built in a "glitch" to the engine, we don't want to build four more just like it. So we'd like to confirm this will work, as advertised, before we get too deep into the other engines. Make sense?

Right now, the first engine is being built in Oklahoma. FIFI is in Texas.

As we've mentioned over and over and over, I've been told that I'll have FIFI flying by Airsho '09. Now, it's my thought that all of the planets will have to be perfectly aligned for that to happen, but there is a chance it could. Only time will tell.

Gary

Are you building NEW ones? I thought you had four new old stock ones of a later mark, that needed to be modified to operate properly on FIFI, or was I mistaken?

Just remember- if you are building four brand new ones- those early engines had issues- which even the Russians discovered when they copied them so exactly... lol... So keep alert to the original issues and correct as required!

Great to hear there is PROGRESS!

Robbie

They are going to be a combination of R-3350-26WD's and -95W's. The basic description of them has been mentioned before on a few other WIX threads.

Sorry for the short answer, gotta go catch a flight to do an inspection on one of our birds.

Gary