February 23, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Hi
I haven’t payed much attention to TF33 engines, because so far I assumed those are identical to JT3D, but, looking at this picture of a E-3 engine (assuming it’s TF33-PW100/100A ):
http://www.380aew.afcent.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/081217-F-2753C-070.jpg
you can see that this is no regular uprated JT3D engine. The machinery and pipes are carefully fitted for the slightly different covering design than on a regular JT3D. This engine was obviously produced from scratch to fit into an E-3 nacelle
There is very little textual information (besides just tables of data) for various types of TF33 engines on the internet, and I’m really curious, about different types of TF33 engines.
For example, what is the story behind this engine. What is it’s closest JT3D brother in terms of parts. And what differences does it have from JT3D besides different nacelle shape etc. (how much of the systems, for fuel, cooling, oil etc are the same as on JT3D, I assume the turbines, compressors and fans are identical)
And what about other variants of TF33? Are all separate products as this one seems to be, or are some of them actually identical to some versions JT3D under a different name?