Off Topic Tried a V12 yesterday

[the hobbler]

Looking through a selection of books for sale at a car show, I found a copy of the RR publication regarding the Crecy---it didn't stay for sale for very long!

 

[the hobbler]

practically all the people I know of 'building' Spitfires will NOT build you a NEW one---you have to provide enough of an original Spitfire for them to 'build onto'---it is then a 're-build/restoration'

 

[AndyRKett]

practically all the people I know of 'building' Spitfires will NOT build you a NEW one---you have to provide enough of an original Spitfire for them to 'build onto'---it is then a 're-build/restoration'

https://www.spitfireclub.co.uk/everything-spitfire

Many many replicas about, probably some you’d not even realise if you saw them.
This kit used a Chevrolet V8 LS2 engine there are quite a few companies in the USA who do aviation conversion kits for this engine

 

[lazylobster]

https://www.spitfireclub.co.uk/everything-spitfire

Many many replicas about, probably some you’d not even realise if you saw them.
This kit used a Chevrolet V8 LS2 engine there are quite a few companies in the USA who do aviation conversion kits for this engine

Whilst I admire what they have done and although only 10% size different, it does not look right to me. Its a bit like buying a diamond versus buying a lab created diamond. People will always want the real thing. Saying that, its a lot, lot cheaper!

 

[Pugglt Auld Jock]

About 3, maybe 4, years ago my son in law took me with him to Duxford for an air display. There was a whole "gaggle" of Spits, I believe at that time it was the largest number in the air at the one time? Also Hurries, a Lanc and others including an ME 109 and a Vought Corsair - an aircraft I've always loved the look of ever since I built an airfix model of one when a boy. I also go all "trembly" at the sound of a radial, and there were plenty of those including a low pass by a DC3.

The Spits, Hurries and Lancaster did a fly past which almost brought me to tears with the sound alone - honestly! then the Spits and Hurricanes split into 2 groups and alterately "buzzed" the place, wheeling and turning spectacularly at the end of each pass. It was one of the most emotional things I've ever experienced. A cacophony of wonderful sounds and sights! I want to do it again please.

 

[AndyRKett]

Whilst I admire what they have done and although only 10% size different, it does not look right to me. Its a bit like buying a diamond versus buying a lab created diamond. People will always want the real thing. Saying that, its a lot, lot cheaper!

Like any replica, they’re never going to be perfect.

The attention to detail that goes into restoring authentic aircraft is to such an extent they’re restored even better than they were new, bearing in mind they used to build these planes in the middle of the war with limited tooling and unskilled workers in poor light in cold and draughty factories. They take years to restore a plane that would have only taken weeks to build

 

[lazylobster]

Like any replica, they’re never going to be perfect.

The attention to detail that goes into restoring authentic aircraft is to such an extent they’re restored even better than they were new, bearing in mind they used to build these planes in the middle of the war with limited tooling and unskilled workers in poor light in cold and draughty factories. They take years to restore a plane that would have only taken weeks to build

Of course and today, the rules and regulations are more stringent than during the war years. No disagreement there. I'm not sure they were "unskilled", they were trained and learnt the production techniques and produced a large amount of aircraft in a very short time.

Replicas and pattern parts is an area where there will always be opinion. In the classic car world some would be happy to have pattern parts on their restore, especially if more performant. Others have to have it 100% as it left the factory. New parts will always be a factor for old historic aircraft where safety comes in. Built to original spec / plans but with better machining and modern materials.

I'm just grateful for these companies that facilitate the restore, maintenance and flight of these historic machines. Keeping them alive for the future generations to enjoy and remember those who flew and gave so much.

I would council anyone who has the opportunity to do so, it's truly epic.

 

[the hobbler]

The 'replicas' may look and fly like the REAL Spitfire, but they do not have one very important 'thing'---the sound! The sound of a Merlin at full chat is something that you never forget--ever!

 

[ChrisUK]

I love WW2 aviation history. Interestingly I read an article here:-

https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2009/05-may/spitfire-fuel/

Thanks to a French scientist fleeing France, meant we had 100 octane fuel. Gaving the Spitfire even more of an edge equating to a 34mph boost at 10,000ft.

 

[AndyRKett]

The 'replicas' may look and fly like the REAL Spitfire, but they do not have one very important 'thing'---the sound! The sound of a Merlin at full chat is something that you never forget--ever!

There are Replicas where they have fitted a merlin engine, obviously the merlin was used in loads of different aircraft so there are people who have built themselves a new plane from new parts then sourced an authentic engine from something else. I don't want to keep going back and forth on this point, basically you made a comment about no one you knew would build a spitfire without something to build onto, but I was just pointing out there are a lot of people who will build there own replicas, they may use the correct or a nearly correct engine, but the cost of even a wrecked Spitfire is considerably more than sourcing an engine and then building yourself an airframe to bolt it to.

Personally while I admire the planes and am definitely jealous of lazylobster for getting a fly in one, I do think the "sound" of a merlin is something that has been somewhat over romanticized the sound of any 27 litre aero engine is going to be epic, but massive radial engines, definitely have a much more gut wrenching thrum.

I live not far from Duxford so having all sorts of war birds flying over is not that uncommon here (just a couple of days ago a Boeing Stearman was flying around over my house) as well as having been stood right next to a Lancaster and many spitfires when they have been started. Maybe I'm a bit blasé about it but the radial engines are generally more rare a sound to hear.

Last time I was at Duxford which was about 3 - 4 years ago, it was the B17 taking off which turned my head (this was not during any airshow), Also worth mentioning that the propeller can make a big difference to the sound, early spits having fixed 2 blade props and later ones had variable 3 bladed props.

I would very much like to have a fly in a Spitfire, I am currently working on getting my private pilots licence so I wonder if they let you have a go if you're fully licenced.

 

[lazylobster]

I love WW2 aviation history. Interestingly I read an article here:-

https://www.rsc.org/news-events/articles/2009/05-may/spitfire-fuel/

Thanks to a French scientist fleeing France, meant we had 100 octane fuel. Gaving the Spitfire even more of an edge equating to a 34mph boost at 10,000ft.

Interesting read. I'm no engineer (clearly) but I'm interested to know how the higher rated fuel gave the engine more performance. The V12 Merlin is quite low RPM and compression ratio of 6:1. I appreciate the higher octane is more stable and will not knock but if the engines were not tuned to take advantage of the new fuel then where did the gains come from?

 

[DaveMcT]

Germany had a real problem getting an adequate fuel octane rating. It got even worse when they went to self-sealing fuel tanks. They were fine when fuelled up and flown but if fuel was allowed to sit in the tank, the new linings depleted the octane booster and the engines got destroyed by pre-ignition (burnt valves, holed pistons, etc). It took them a year to discover why engines were seemingly randomly blowing up.

The Mosquito and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning ran two engines, because the increased power gave increased speed and range. The redundancy was good to have but the purpose was speed.

Reading the text I think this was from 2017 -

https://www.lincsaviation.co.uk/news/latest-news/mosquito-arrives.htm

 

[AndyRKett]

The Mosquito and the Lockheed P-38 Lightning ran two engines, because the increased power gave increased speed and range. The redundancy was good to have but the purpose was speed.

Really so why was the range not really any different to a spitfire?
Speed is relative, as the war progressed spitfires got a lot faster hitting Mach 0.9 the mosquitoes didn’t go faster than that. What is useful in a warbird is being robust. If one engine gets damaged in a dog fight and the pilot limps it home it’s a lot quicker to patch up a repair than it is build an complete new aircraft.

Also extra power and a bigger plane = much more weight but also more weight carrying capacity. The Lancaster had 4 merlin engines and still a similar speed to the spitfires and mosquito.

 

[the hobbler]

I can't (and won't) argue on any of your observations; and I agree a big 'radial' has a very distinctive, and endearing, sound. I spent a day at the Shuttleworth collection with some friends and by studying their 'sectioned' radial engine was able to get my head round how they worked and how the conrods were connected to the crankshaft--it was very interesting.
Your comments regarding the Spitfire 'copies' is very interesting and can only increase my knowledge--thank you. I genuinly didn't know that such 'copies' existed, let alone that they used big Chevy engines in some of them.
There are probably a great number of 'Packard' Merlins still floating around---the US navy ordered 3 spare engines for EACH OF THE (3) ENGINES in a PT boat--12 engines for each PT boat that went down the slipway. Being that a lot of the PT boats never made it to their 1st engine change, that left an awful lot of brand new engines still in their crates---I have been told that occasionally a 'crated' engine will still turn up.

 

[StevenRB45]

Very jealous of the Spitfire flight especially such a famous pilot and plane, suspect I had a poster of it on my wall as a child..yes I was that cool also had a Lancaster and framed picture of evening star the steam engine.

Regards engines, you have to remember it's been 75 years. They were used in a lot of planes not just warbirds but things like AVRO York transport aircraft (basically a wide body Lancaster for transport.) Lots of countries bought up war surplus planes for front line service after the war hence the "Buchon" nick grace used to fly which were originally built by the Spanish airforce to combine the readily available merlin with engineless me109 airframes. They also did a version of the He111 with a merlin which stood in for the real thing in the film "battle of Britain".

Basically most have been used and abused for decades by this point so finding one good enough to put in a plane is hard. The mosquito they had flying and subsequently crashed had two mismatched engines as they could not find a pair of the same spec and that was in the 90s.

If you've watch "ice pilots" they use DC3s and C46 commandos for scheduled flights and it's a constant struggle for bits even on something as apparently common as a DC3. All the new old stock is pretty much gone and a lot of the time the only way to keep flying is to build one good plane out of 2.

 

[ChrisUK]

Interesting read. I'm no engineer (clearly) but I'm interested to know how the higher rated fuel gave the engine more performance. The V12 Merlin is quite low RPM and compression ratio of 6:1. I appreciate the higher octane is more stable and will not knock but if the engines were not tuned to take advantage of the new fuel then where did the gains come from?

I could be mistaken but the Spitfire revisions from that particular timeframe were using the supercharged variant of the merlin engine. So yes, low base compression, however forced induction. We all know how much force induction engines like high octane :devil: :slayer:

 

[the hobbler]

The Merlin WAS the supercharged engine---the non-supercharged version (as used in tanks etc) was, I believe, called the Meteor.

 

[AndyRKett]

I could be mistaken but the Spitfire revisions from that particular timeframe were using the supercharged variant of the merlin engine. So yes, low base compression, however forced induction. We all know how much force induction engines like high octane :devil: :slayer:

Low compression ratio on piston stroke but I think I used a silly high level of compressed air from the super charger much more than you’d normally have on any car

The Merlin WAS the supercharged engine---the non-supercharged version (as used in tanks etc) was, I believe, called the Meteor.

I seem to recall the idea of using merlins in tanks was because where a plane was damaged and its engine could not go back into a plane they rebuilt them into tank engines so technically speaking all meteors where merlins at one point. (Though I’m sure there where manufactured engines that went into the tanks at some point)


Not far from me is an air museum which is founded and run by all volunteers and has been for decades, one of the things they do as a club is go out and try and find the remains of downed planes from ww2, over the years they have acquired a large collection of wrecked engines, some they found themselves and some snagged in fishing trawler nets just off the east Anglian coast. There are a few destroyed merlins from multiple different planes of that era but what always fascinates me about these engines is how intricate the inner workings are, easy to see on an engine that’s been destroyed but not so easy to see normally unless you’re friends with a specialist aero engine mechanic.
There are lots of little drives, cogs and wheels that go into making the engine function nothing like a modern engine as every aspect is not only mechanical but designed to be as strong as possible with built in redundancy. All in a time when they had no computers and only slide rules.
Designing an engine back then was a huge mathematical exercise.

 

[Bleeding Knuckles]

The Merlin WAS the supercharged engine---the non-supercharged version (as used in tanks etc) was, I believe, called the Meteor.

Yes Tom, you are correct the 'Meteor' was a damn good engine with only 650 hp it would hustle a Centurion tank along at some 20+ mph and at 52 tons it was very reliable - bit of a faff changing the plugs though, one had to hang upside down along side the cylinder head - happy memories!!!!!!
Ian.

 

[the hobbler]

You are correct Andy, a large number of the Meteor engines WERE "ex Merlin" and in fact the 1st Meteor put into a tank (a modified Crusader) was just such an engine, and had been taken out of a crashed plane. On the initial demonstrations/tests the Crusader was able to exceed 50mph!. Quite a number of "not-important-to save-weight" parts were manufactured in steel rather than an alloy. To keep up with Meteor demand, ex-damaged-aircraft and surplus early-model Merlins were also converted into Meteors. The fundemental difference between the 2 engines (other than 1 had a supercharger and 1 didn't) was that the engine, in order to drive an 'auto-box' (rather than a propellor), ran in opposite directions, so in converting a Merlin into a Meteor, different cam-shafts and different pistons had to be used. Removing all the 'blower-drive' equipment also made the Meteor engine quite bit shorter, and a 'flat' sump allowed the Meteor to sit lower in the tank's engine bay. A large number of Merlin parts that did not meet the exacting standards required for an engine to go into an aeroplane were ofton moved across to the Meteor production facilities
In the motor magazine "Practical Classic Cars" one of the regular articles is written by a guy who has fitted a Meteor engine into a Rover SD1. In order to get more power from the engine, he is trying to fit Merlin cams onto the engine and come up with a reliable way of running the cams in the opposite direction to the original (Meteor) cams.
After a lot of moving production around, Rover at Tyseley and Morris in Coventry became the main builders of the Meteor engine. Look on Wikipedia---there is a lot of information on the development of the Meteor tank engine, which went on to be one of the most succesful engines ever put into a British tank and was still being used right into the mid 1960s.
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