This past weekend, the FAA Flying Club achieved another milestone in its long and storied history. Our 1976 Piper Cherokee PA-28-151 received a much needed boost in power via a brand new 180 horsepower Lycoming engine provided by Bold Warrior and the fine folks at CAVU Wings!
The Bold Warrior upgrade also includes a Supplemental Type Certificate, an overhauled Sensenich propeller, and a 0 time engine with overhauled nickel cylinders. A new airbox is also required during the upgrade. As part of the upgrade we also received overhauled motor mounts.
The Bold Warrior upgrade comes with many performance improvements. The following performance data comes from the Bold Warrior website:
- Increase in climb performance +200 fpm
- Decrease in takeoff roll: -350 ft
- Increase in cruise speed: +6 kts*
- Increase in service ceiling: +3000 ft
- Range at 75% POWER at 8000 ft: Increase of 35 miles
This increased performance costs an additional 1.2 GPH fuel burn and 12 pound decrease in useful load.
The FAA Flying Club was originally scheduled to fly our Piper Cherokee down to Atlanta and have the team at CAVU Wings upgrade our plane over a long weekend. Our plans quickly changed after an oil change showed signs of engine wear that prevented us from flying the long cross country down to Atlanta. This was no problem for Kent Gordon and John Perez of CAVU Wings. They brought their shop to us and performed the upgrade in our hangar at KHEF!
Kent and John completed the upgrade over the course of the weekend and FAA Flying Club members, Tom Shalhoub and Dan Botzer, performed the inaugural flight with Mike Atherton and Glenn Collins chasing in N9397W to snap some awesome photos of the new N75382 Piper Cherokee (Bold) Warrior in flight.
We can’t say enough good things about Kent and John from Bold Warrior! Their commitment to customer service goes above and beyond, just like the products they install! Thanks for pumping new life into our 1976 Piper Cherokee and we look forward to putting many miles and smiles on her and our members in the coming years!
If you have a Piper Cherokee Warrior and want to inject new life into it, please reach out to CAVU Wings and inquire about the Bold Warrior upgrade!