Britbike forum Forums General discussion The Rod and Tappet Rolls Royce Merlin

I know the Wright R3350 was assembled, test run, disassembled, checked, reassembled, test run, then packaged for shipment if it was ok. If it wasn’t ok, the whole thing was repeated. But in reality, the R3350 had issues. There had to be a lot of effort to get it right.

I have read a lot on the P&W R2800 which was built in huge numbers and is generally considered one of the best big piston aircraft engines ever built. I have never read that P&W or it’s contractors put that much effort into a R2800. It was a good engine that just worked.

P&W engines shot in Australia.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe..._Beaufort_bombers_in_Australia_c1943.jpg

"These engines were licence built in Lidcombe NSW."

Well, wait, though ... an AC Cobra in 1967 cost about $6000. To build one from scratch today costs about $150,000, which represents the change in the value of money.

But a 1967 AC Cobra might go for $1,000,000. That amount is NOT due to a change in the value of money ( x 25), but in the collector value of the car.

And house prices have not gone up 1000 times. My uncle's house he built in 1945 when he came home from the war in Wheaton, MD was $5,500. The family sold the house (much improved but still in tune with the neighborhood) for $450,000 a couple years ago. That's closer to 100x rather than 1000x ....

Got to be careful about using collector cars and artwork as indications of the value of money.

Lannis

You haven't seen Sydney real estate prices.

And country prices even.
And London prices also.
And many parts of the globe.
And I think that NZ eclipses all those, by some margin !?!

It would seem that Merlin engines were being manufactured in Melbourne Oz also,
to overcome shortages in supply from the motherland.. And after WW2 also.

What always struck me as odd is that the first Messerschmidt BF109 prototypes were powered by Rolls Royce engines. I guess profits triumphed over treaty restrictions on aircraft development?

I guess it came full circle when the BF109s used in the movie The Battle of Britain were borrowed from Spain, with Merlin engines.

My info says the BF109 prototypes were powered by Jumo 210's, an inverted V 12 like the later production aircraft Benz engines...
The HA 1112 was a Spanish license built BF 109 ,but fitted with other engines...The Merlin was first adapted to this model around 1954..

One of the odd production stories involving the large piston engines was the engines used on the B24's built by Ford at Willow Run. Getting engines and constant speed propellers to play well together was at times difficult. Ford was turning out 1 plane every 59 minutes or so. That meant all systems needed to be functional so it could be flight tested and delivered.

Ford had a building onsite for Pratt & Whitney & Hamilton Standard to match the R1830 engines to the propellers. This was done on essentially a dyno. Contemporary reports from workers in the Willow Run plant claimed they at times installed engines that were still warm from their time on the dyno. But it was also reported that Ford built B24's had far less engine/propeller issues than planes built by anyone else.

The P&W 1830's installed at the Ford Willow were manufactured by Chevrolet, Buick and P&W.
Ford built many B model P&W R2800's.. The higher HP C model had forged heads and stronger internal parts were made by Chevy, Buick, Nash and P&W. By 1937 Chevy had overtaken Ford in annual sales and was the world's largest single brand name car maker.
And Singer Sewing machine was the go to for smaller intricate aluminum castings.

GM also built all the Allison V-1710 engines, in Indiana ?



Notice any resemblance to anything - like a Merlin ? Or maybe vice-versa.
Only single stage supercharging, so didn't quite have the ooomph.

Quite a big rebuild shop for them out in Oz.
https://tradecoastcentralheritagepa...bion-Brisbane-during-World-War-Two-1.jpg

If you have interest in the Allison engine then buy Vee's for Victory. It's an expensive book, about 60 bucks new, but a complete history of Allison Engineering and the development of the V1710. Lot's of factory info, specifications and a chapter comparing the Allison and Merlin with performance statistics....Well worth the price in my opinion..
Many Allisons had dual stage blowers, both mechanical and turbo. GM owned Allison but had no design input...

This is a great thread, but lacking another great engine of WW2
The Bristol Hercules sleeve valve radial made more H.P per C.I than the poppet valve engines of the era.
But way more complicated!!!
Less outside diameter to as there was no rocker covers etc. so less drag
It powered the Stirlings, Halifaxes and Beaufighters with great success.
A can of worms I may have opened, but one worth looking at.
Goodnight fellas!

When I first started working it was at Longbridge car plant in the SW of Birmingham. During WW2 it was involved in building, amongst others, the Lancaster Bomber which took place in the Flight Shed. Some Shed





Still in use up until finally demolished in 2011.

It was a machine shop when I worked there, I remember walking in one end and being unable to see all the way to the other end due to the fog from all the machines cutting metal with suds as cooling fluid.

If you were called over to be boardroom for a grilling then you got to see this painting of Stirling bombers being built.

I could do with a shed like that

Add an observatory dome and you have Magnetoman's digs.

regarding bristol hercules it is my understanding that the factory where my 1949 Ferguson TE20 tractor was built was located in Coventry and was 1 million sq. ft. and was used during the war for building the Hercules engines in 1946 it was leased to Ferguson for 50,000 pounds a year...they built tractors there til 1956 wonder what happened to the building?

Not Merlin powered, but interesting none the less.

At Moree in northern N.S.W. one of the pubs, the Amaroo Tavern, has a DC3 out the front, mounted on steel columns. You climb a set of steps and enter through the door near the tail. It's fascinating to be able to wander around inside, and educational to see how little room there was in an aircraft that was probably considered fairly spacious in its day. I'm old and fat so I didn't attempt the pilot's seat because, being alone, I might have been in it for some time.

Obviously suited as a long haul pilot then !

My fathers shop bought a DC3 motor from one of the many aircraft graveyards after the war, possibly Wagga ?
A Wright Cyclone, 2 bank 18 cylinder. He said it cost 2 quid, and the magneto and carby would have been another 2 quid each.
They had to sign something that it would never fly. So the carby and maggie were not needed.

It came in a crate, weighed nearly a ton, and when they smashed it up to melt it down (!!) said it was all like new inside.
Alloy was scarce after the war otherwise, and many common components were unobtanium.
They used it to cast pulleys for water pumps.

There was still a valve head kicking around when I was a kid. Big as the palm of your hand - as an adult.
Apparently the exhaust valves were sodium cooled, and they cut the stems off and threw them in a bucket of water.
You could set the hydrogen alight as it bubbled up, and would burn for hours.

Apparently a new DC3 motor today is somewhere north of $400,000 so should have bought a stack of them !?
There were Merlins and Meteors and P&W and Allisons and sheet metal as far as the eye could see apparently.
All whittled down over the years until it was all recycled one way or another...
We had a wheelbarrow that had a tailwheel of some type - nylon, so never went flat.

Count the defunct engines there...

Hmmm. No date

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/62/89/47/62894725ac3b4d3e9efd913a587635a7.jpg

Good investment ?
IF you had someplace to store them AND 20/20 hindsight.

Or a set of Merlin cams
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/4RgAAOSwxUBhlBm7/s-l1600.jpg

Could get expensive, real quick, might stick to motorcycles ...

Just a note...DC 3's mostly used a 14 cylinder two row P&W 1830 Wasp..Wright 1820 9 cylinder Cyclones were also used...The Wright 3350 was the infamous B29 engine but had good reliability in other aircraft..And powers or did power the Rare Bear, a highly modified air racer Grumman Bear Cat navy fighter..The Grumman Wildcat and Hellcat are seldom mentioned. The Wildcat had to face the superior Japanese Zero early in the war. But it's rugged construction and pilot techniques leveled the playing field .The prewar Wildcat was the world's first fighter to feature dual stage supercharging.The faster Hellcat was built to be the Zero killer...In general, the primary design of American combat aircraft was pilot protection.They sacrificed performance for armor and robust construction..

Oops, yer right, I've been mixing my metaphors.

It was the 9 cyl Wright Cyclone.
I didn't see it, of course....

Some P&W twin row wasps were built in a brand new factory in Oz in WW2 for aussie use.

Hello Kommando,
Thanks for sharing those images, I have lived on and off all my life (66 years) practically in the shadow of 'The Austin' - still do, and over the years have spent many hours in the various factory locations working for different outside contractors.
I have never seen those images before.
The entire place is now practically flat or houses, just a couple of admin buildings and the old 'design dome' on the flat of the old airfield - they flew the planes off over Cofton Park aparently (no-one to injure if anything failed)!!
When they were demolishing, the contractors 'discovered' the war time factory tunnels under Grovely Lane connecting factories, caused a stir as they had to be backfilled!

Hi All,
Back in 1991 I had the pleasure of over an hour long sight seeing flight in a DC3
The flight was meant to be 30 min but the airport got busy and we were sent off for about another 40/45 minutes
I will never forget the flight and sound of the engines, The plane just seemed to trundle down the runway and float into the sky
I got some decent ariel photographs of the area I live in as well

John

In 1966 I was in the Army and took a civilian 727 flight from NYC to Denver Colorado. Then a short flight to Ft Carson. It was Frontier Airlines flying in a DC3. The aircraft is unpressurized and the average elevation in that area is 5000 foot. The plane flew at about 10,000, the flight attendant handed out chewing gum to ease our ears from "popping"
In the 1950's I few from the NYC area to Florida with my father several times, 4 engine DC 6's that are pressurized. The engine cowl flaps were open during the takeoff and the red hot exhaust pipes could be seen...2400 take off HP P&W R2800 with water injection