Spitfire engine out. Safe landing. Lax maintenance to blame.

[facthunter]

The engine never had a TBO above 650 Hour's and only a Very few countries allowed it on the CIVIL register for RPT.   Nev

[danny_galaga]

18 hours ago, onetrack said:

I've always been amused at the story (perhaps apocryphal) that reputedly occurred between the RR engineers and the Packard engineers, when the discussions were taking place with regards to manufacture of the Merlin by Packard.

The story goes, the Packard engineers asked for details of the engineering stress and strain calculations on the Merlin components by RR engineers.

 

It's reported the RR engineers replied, "Oh, we never bothered with those type of calculations, we just ran the engine under huge loads until something broke - and then we made that part stronger!"

This news apparently horrified the Packard engineers who normally went into great detail regarding calculations of stresses and strains, and who never considered testing engine components to destruction.

 

I think the best comment I've seen regarding the Merlin, is one that said, "if RR had ever known they were going to have to produce 150,000+ engines for aircraft during the War, they would've designed a different engine".

If it wasn't for WW2, we would possibly only have ever seen a few hundred Merlins manufactured, before a new improved design was produced.

Still, testing to destruction would glean a while bunch of info above individual calculations. For instance, say calculations tell you part A might break. Actually running a prototype until part A breaks might show that breaking that impacts parts B and C. 

[facthunter]

For an Engine well before it's time, Look up 1914 Delage Four valve desmo Racer, One of three still left.  I knew it before the Block had to be replaced. It was worked on By Jack Nelson at Romsey, A very good friend of mine and IT was a " Runner" for quite a while being entered at the Geelong sprints several times. The replacement block complete with Head was done At Malden involving "Up the CREEK Motors" which specialised in Austin 7 s. THAT CAR is Priceless.

  Another NICE motor was MILLER a racing speedboat Motor which was the BASIS of the OFFENHAUSER race car engines, later.  US made.  Superb quality. Late 20 and up to Post war.  I had the Privilege to work on one in the 50's. It's well worth looking this up. Nev

[onetrack]

I've seen a 6 cylinder 1930 Bentley engine in an engine reconditioning shop, and it was an amazing piece of engineering - a monobloc with no separate head, and I hate to think of the amount of finicky work involved in repairing it and reassembling it.

 

Edited 19 hours ago by onetrack

[facthunter]

Hard to do valve seat Inserts Bugatti's are similar. Nev

[Siso]

I reckon there was an australian drag engine manufacturer in the 80's that did the same thing. No head gaskets to blow. Were the early merlins the same?

[facthunter]

The Merlin has no head gaskets.  Each Bank has the cylinders and heads made in one piece and held to the case by long studs. Nev