Quality Of Tools

[IMM]

Did your hair grow with these rocks?

[IMM]

No. In-line water cooled.

[John Laird]

I expect 2000+bhp was a bit of a handful, even in 50 tons of tank. They took the supercharger off, basically.

[Grunff]

Lol...yes, yes it did. You're a hoot!

[Dave Plowman]

Dear boy, instead of spouting nonsense, get hold of a copy of Autocar and look at its real world fuel consumption in comparison to other cars of similar performance. Oh - I forgot. You only ever believe maker's claims.

[Dave Plowman]

It's a V-12, pea brain.

[Dave Plowman]

If you research a little further, you'll find the fuel consumption penalty is fundamental to the basic concept.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, a V24 from memory with a 3:1 gearbox on the front.

[The Natural Philosopher]

A Merlin was fited to a transit van at one time. In the back. No room under the bonnet.

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Aren't they all rotary? :-)

[John Laird]

If you've seen one on display, you'll know why. 27litres of V12 (*) takes up a fair bit of room. Even if it could be shoehorned in, there's then the question of a gearbox stressed to transfer the power to the wheels...

(*) A bit of background research revealed that all the engines it outperformed during WW2 were considerably larger. A testament to the RR engineers, methinks, even allowing for the supercharger technology, which was quite widespread anyway.

[Dave Plowman]

If it really did give 2000 bhp from 27 supercharged litres, that's only 75 bhp per litre. Nothing special even then - although of course it had to have a reasonable life, I suppose.

[John Laird]

Perhaps you have some comparitive figures from that era, I would've thought that a fairly impressive specific power output for the early 40s ? You can't draw comparisons with smaller engines because it is always harder to get the same rating as size increases. Witness modern motorcycle power plants putting out about 150bhp/l. I think a Merlin ran about 3000rpm, no doubt someone can work out the torque ;-) It was certainly enough to spin a plane over on take-off without full opposite rudder. And all that with carburettors too.

Real supercharged Merlin-in-a-car at:

[Andy Wade]

Err, excuse me Mr. IMM. What you have posted there is (mostly) my copyright material, first posted here by myself on 2nd January 2001. If you doubt this, look here:

object strongly to you plagiarising my work and trying to pass it off as your own - the more so because my 2001 article was in reply to one of yours (you were still calling yourself Adam then) in which you had got yourself into a complete muddle on this same subject of energy and power. Anyway, I will not be suing you for breach of copyright on this occasion, provided that you post a public apology. I have no objection to reasonable non-commercial reproduction of material that I've posted to Usenet _provided_ that the reproduced text is clearly identified and due acknowledgement of the source is given. Please familiarise yourself with the requirements of the Designs Copyright and Patents Act of 1988.

I also note that the version you just posted is rather similar to another copyright-infringing article which was posted to alt.solar.thermal on 15th August 2002 by someone calling themself 'News' ( [e-mail]) and which can be found here: . Since that form of e-mail address is similar, I think, to one that you used to use and the article was also posted via pol.co.uk, I am inclined to think that 'News' is just another instance of 'IMM'|'Adam', although ICBW. If it was you, that makes two apologies required. OK?

[Grunff]

Bwahaha!!! I did wonder where he'd copied it from!!

Thank you for pointing this out, and good luck in resolving the matter.

[Andy Hall]

I knew it had to be plagiarism - the grammar and spelling are correct and the sentences scan properly.

I also notice that IMM has inherited Adam's confusion between energy and power. No wonder first form thermodynamics escapes him completely.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its good for an aircraft engine. Remember they hadn't got dynamic balancing then - RPM was only about 3,000 max.

I reads some where that someone took and old 1920 something RR engine, rated at 2,000 RPM only, balanced it, and doubled the BHP by getting it to go to over 4,000 RPM.

[IMM]

In aircraft engines the power to weight factor is the most important. The Merlin had a high P/W ratio. It was initially developed for racing planes, as was the Spitfire.

Later Merlins had fuel injection.

[RichardS]

droll :-)

stunningly enough, it seems he doesn't have anything further to say on the subject. Well, nothing of any relevance that is.

-- Richard Sampson

email me at richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk