Saddled with a battered image, handicapped by a powerplant with a nasty reputation, the Turbo Arrow should be approached with caution. But various upgrades and a kind of Darwin effect may have weeded out many of the real clunkers by now.
When Piper hung a 200-HP turbocharged Continental onto the basic Arrow airframe in 1977, the combination looked like one made in heaven, rather than Vero Beach.
It was a perfect match: the worlds premier economy retractable single and a K-Mart kind of powerplant that promised high-tech performance at low-tech prices.
Alas, the engine was finicky, tricky to operate and prone to self destruction. Things got so bad that the National Tr...
Saddled with a battered image, handicapped by a powerplant with a nasty reputation, the Turbo Arrow should be approached with caution. But various upgrades and a kind of Darwin effect may have weeded out many of the real clunkers by now.
When Piper hung a 200-HP turbocharged Continental onto the basic Arrow airframe in 1977, the combination looked like one made in heaven, rather than Vero Beach.
