Solent Gas turbine jet cart

Approximately 13 years ago I got hold of a very nice Solent turboshaft engine.
After some musings as to what to do with it I decided to convert it into a turbojet
engine.

So the removal of the gearbox and the modification of the oil circuit was easy.
However the free power turbine nozzle guide vane pack formed part of the inner
air casing for the combustion chamber. So to get aound this I simply machined
out the nozzle guide vanes and left the outer casing in place. This case is normally
retained by the gearbox so when I made the jet pipe, I constructed it so that it would retain the ring in the same fashion as the original gearbox.



This single shot oil system was modified to enable continuous running.
The governed maximum rotational speed of this enigne is 62000 rpm. At the time
I worked for a company who at one time tested these engines and stories were in abundance of turbine wheels being released and bouncing around the test cells, or
the govenors failing and the wheels bursting and peppering the inside of the cell.
This led to me deciding to strip it, with particular interest being paid to the simple
govenor. So after fully stripping down to the last nut and bolt and re building I
bolted it to a test frame and ran it up.

Thankfully it stabilised at 62000 rpm as happy as a happy thing, so I decided to
install it into a rudimentary go cart. What fun it turned out to be blasting up and
down at Lyneham.That was until the wheels started to come off. Then after years of it sitting around I sold the engine to a friend who then sold it back to me, I sold it again, then bought it back, then eventually sold it on again to Aid at Jetpower (see links page), scrapped the cart and turned my attention to larger engines

 

 

 

 

 

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