| Author | Message | ||
     Slaughter |
And 2000+ HP!   } (Message edited by slaughter on September 21, 2015) | ||
| Teeps |
18 glorious cylinders! | ||
| Tootal |
As cool as that is, as a maintenance guy, it looks like a nightmare!!  Bet it sounds awesome though...but then there's the valve adjustments!!!  | ||
| S2t_bama |
Mr. black shirt, please watch out for that spinny thing on the front. It WILL bite you. | ||
| Slaughter |
Tootal - Think 14 cylinders is tough (28 plugs) How about the R-4360? http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/MuseumExhib its/FactSheets/Display/tabid/509/Article/195794/pr att-whitney-r-4360-wasp-major.aspx 28 cylinder radial!? (56 plugs)  | ||
| Dwardo |
I know a guy who pit crews on a pulling tractor that has an R-3350 Wright. It's one of the later turbo-compound ones with exhaust-driven turbines geared directly to the crank. I think those were used on Lockheed Constellation airliners. It runs on methanol and he says they estimate it might make 5000 hp. Going to see if run is on my do list. | ||
| Hughlysses |
I know a guy who pit crews on a pulling tractor that has an R-3350 Wright. It's one of the later turbo-compound ones with exhaust-driven turbines geared directly to the crank. I think those were used on Lockheed Constellation airliners. It runs on methanol and he says they estimate it might make 5000 hp. Going to see if run is on my do list. Holy crap- got any pics of that rig? | ||
| Sifo |
NICE!!! | ||
| Ourdee |
I wanna ride! | ||
| Aesquire |
Pushrods! Hah! ( actually I'm a big fan of the P&W R-4360. Not such a fan of the Wright R-3350. More B-29 crews went down from engine failure than enemy action. You can blame that directly on the manufacturer. There is a REASON Curtis-Wright is gone, and good riddance. ) This one not only is too advanced for Pushrods... It's too advanced for poppet valves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Sabre  | ||
| Slaughter |
Sleeve-valved Centaurus - used on Sea Fury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Centaurus but later racers at Reno would often change to the P&W R2800 | ||
| Hughlysses |
Cool stuff. Some of the piston engines they came up with for aircraft around WWII would blow the minds of most hot rodders. | ||
| Tootal |
You're right Hugh. The amount of experimentation during that era was amazing. We are the government and we don't care what it cost! | ||
| Hughlysses |
Napier Nomad II turbo-compound diesel:  Schematic:  Crazy stuff! | ||
| Aesquire |
There's a bunch of work, and serendipity in engine development. The Centaurus is a Properly Bad A$$ engine. But they couldn't make the sleeve valves work properly for quite a while, burned oil nearly as fast as high octane gasoline. Then a cylinder grinder operator made a mistake, and didn't dress the wheel before doing up a batch of cylinders. THOSE cylinders held oil. So they changed to undressed wheels, ( and learned what surface finish they really needed, which is NOT what the book said ) The reason they mostly replace the Bristol Centaurus with the P&W in race planes is parts availability. Thousands of big iron transport and passenger planes ran Wright & P&W engines, post war, while Brit production was tiny after the war. If the racers could go faster with the Bristol, they'd use it. | ||
| Oldog |
Slaughter: IIRC doesn't RareBear hold some kind of closed course speed record? | ||
| Hughlysses |
I always thought this was a truly bad-ass unlimited air racer:   The Red Baron, a highly modified P-51 Mustang, had its original Packard-built Rolls Royce V-12 Merlin of 1650 cubic inches replaced with Rolls Royce V-12 Griffon of 2240 cubic inches. They also added dual contra-rotating propellers to handle the output of the larger engine. IIRC, they said they weren't trying to develop tremendously more power than the P-51's running hot-rodded Merlins, they were mainly trying to achieve similar power without stressing the engine so much. Unfortunately, after setting several records and winning a lot of races, the plane suffered a magneto failure which led to other engine parts failing which resulted in a hellacious crash, which the pilot miraculously survived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RB51_Red_Baron | ||
| Dwardo |
Hughysses, I do have pix I think. I'll have to look. It doesn't really look anything like a tractor. The guy says the tractor to beat is running two Allison V12s. The 3350 actually turned out to be a great engine, notably in the Douglas Skyraider but it used tons of oil. The sleeve valves in the Centaurus are interesting because they couldn't get the Napier Sabre engine working right until they went to Bristol and adapted their methods for making sleeve valves. After that I believe the Sabre had the highest specific output of any production aircraft engine. I have a friend (now 105) who worked on the X7750 project (I think that was the displacement) at Lycoming. The B36 was to have been powered by those but when the project was cancelled they used the P&W 4360 but it was underpowered so they added the jets on the wings. Planes were soooo much more intereting then. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Hughlysses, I do have pix I think. I'll have to look. It doesn't really look anything like a tractor. Cool- I'd love to see it. I googled and found quite a few pics of radial-powered tractor pulling tractors. I've seen the multi-engined jobs and the Allison-powered jobs, but radials in tractors were new to me. | ||
| Tootal |
Interesting that the Red Baron had a Michelob sponsorship. That was before I started working at the brewery and when Michelob tasted like Michelob! Very cool plane. Too bad it was destroyed. | ||
| Hughlysses |
I have a friend (now 105) who worked on the X7750 project (I think that was the displacement) at Lycoming. I'd never heard of that one either; it was actually a 7755 (!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycoming_XR-7755# That's awesome that you know someone who worked on it. Tootal- Yea, it's a real shame the Red Baron crashed and burned. A few months after the crash occurred (I hadn't heard about it) I happened to catch the Reno races on TV one Sunday afternoon. I called a buddy of mine up to let him know and we were talking when the RB declared mayday and pulled up out of the race pattern. He went about 15 seconds and then that thing dropped like a rock behind a hill and there was a huge fireball! We both said "HOLY S**T!!!" We were both thinking there's no way anyone survived that crash. Then they cut to the studio and the pilot is sitting there with the commentator; the race was taped. The wikipedia article explains a little about the mods to the plane that helped him survive. | ||
| Dwardo |
Hugh, the guy told me that the rules say you can run 4 big-block chevies, 3 Chrysler hemis, 2 liquid-cooled aircraft engines, or 1 air-cooled aircraft engine. I have heard that some Merlin engines are modified to use Allison connecting rods for more strength. A long time ago I remember seeing dozens of V12 aircraft engines at a local scrapyard. I don't know if they were Allisons or Rolls Royce. I should have tried to buy one. My friend George (the 105 guy) worked for Lycoming for many years. He is still going strong. Just gave up his pilot's license a few years ago. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Edward- Interesting stuff. I haven't followed tractor pulling in a long time. I lived in Ohio for 2 years in the early 80's and got to go to a couple of events. They have some pretty impressive machinery. I had an issue of a hot rod magazine many years ago that featured a street-legal mid-60's Chevelle with a V-12 Allison in it! The guy had sectioned the body, shortening the passenger compartment and lengthening the hood to accommodate the engine. It had 12 exhaust pipes exiting under the rear bumper. Man, I'd have loved to have heard that thing run. | ||
| Hughlysses |
Ha! I love the internet:     Built by a guy named Ed Wood who died in 2009. Apparently he loved airplanes but couldn't afford them, so he built stuff like this instead! | ||
| 86129squids |
HHHehhhhehehhhh, MMMmmmhehehehhhhhh, THAT'S COOL. Got Wood. | ||
| Oldog |
I remember reading about that beast in HS OMG could you imagine stomping on that thing and trying to keep it going strait! herding cats! | ||
| Dwardo |
"Ed Wood". That's funny. That's my name. It's cool because nobody can find anything on me on the internet because all you get are hits about the famous grade-b movie director of the same name. I remember reading in some magazine about a Rolls Royce car with a Merlin engine that had been "detuned" to 700hp. Probably disabled the blower. So cool. | ||
| Hughlysses |
I found the above photos of the Allison-powered Chevelle in this thread: http://forums.hotrod.com/high-performance-pontiac/ 70/8526719/the-general-discussion/idea-400-with-30 1-crank/page10.html#ixzz3mVGBzwtI Here's a cool post about the car:
There's also some pics of a Rolls Royce Merlin powered station wagon! | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Curtis-Wright is gone, and good riddance. Ah, they might not make engines but the company is still in existence. | ||
| Slaughter |
Look at the wingtip vortex!  |
