MISSING PLANS

[Gil Boyd]

Geoff,
Neverth less still a cheap sale in todays standards for such an iconic piece of history, if you also the space to park it

[bigduke6]

Geoff,
Neverth less still a cheap sale in todays standards for such an iconic piece of history, if you also the space to park it

True Gil, Out of interest I trawled the net yesterday in my tea breaks looking at various Merlins and facts and figures, couldn't find much much up to date stuff though, but some figures from 2005 based on a Spitfire.

Engine removed for Overhaul at 500 hrs, rebuild costs circa £85,000.00 before spares etc.

Appx 8hrs maintenance to 1 hrs flying......


Link below regarding two Griffon engines but from an Avro Shackleton, I'm guessing all or most in collectors hands are take out ones with no more air miles and sold off rather than repair, guess back then with a hanger full of New or previous rebuilt engines it was cost effective to bin the old ones when the Aircraft was due to be replaced.

Not quite an aircraft but the same Gravy when I was looking for parts for my Matchless, searching high and low for cams for the engine, in the end they come from Germany NOS in there original 1956 box.....

Griffon: Chance to own rare successor of the Rolls Royce Merlin engine as three are auctioned | Daily Mail Online

[martins8589]

Please BD6 not the Burma Spitfires again you know Peter L has the inside run on one!!!!!

Please do tell Cinders!!!

[CINDERS]

Nooooo Nooo we went through this for ages about a pie in the sky on crated Spitfires being buried somewhere in Burma and as yet naught has happened in them being found or even existing it is like that thing we did at school you know the first person tells the second the second the third until the message goes around the class room back to the 1st teller.

It may go like this ~ "The orange fell to the ground" comes back as "There are 12 new WWII orange Spitfires crated and buried in Burma." get the drift...........

[Brit plumber]

There's plenty of Merlin engines still available, there modular construction means that there is very little that can't be remanufactured. The RAF probably still has hundreds of them tucked away in collections etc.

The meteor is basically a merlin and can be converted, there are even Meteor engines that were once merlins, these were engines that were no longer air worthy but were perfectly fine for ground use for example an aircraft which landed wheels up and damaged the prop. I think it was Rover who converted these. They also had a Meteorite version of the meteor which was diesel!!

[Flying10uk]

The army must, surely, have still had a few spare Meteor engines in store into the early 1990s because there were still a few specialist/modified Centurion "engineer" tanks in service with the British army until then.

[Brit plumber]

Those spare engines have just come up for sale (well back in Feb) they were rebuilt at Warminster in 1991 (probably a rush for Gulf War 1) and have been in storage since. I think it was BV Trading who purchased them from the MOD.

[muffett.2008]

I was tasked to move a couple of Centurion tanks on to the Anti Armour firing ranges many years ago.
I contacted Col Pay who has a flock of warbirds to see if he was interested in the engines, organised a deal with Range Control and tasked my Tech Support boys to do the job as a training exercise.
Every one was happy.

---------- Post added at 08:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:18 PM ----------

I was tasked to move a couple of Centurion tanks on to the Anti Armour firing ranges many years ago.
I contacted Col Pay who has a flock of warbirds to see if he was interested in the engines, organised a deal with Range Control and tasked my Tech Support boys to do the job as a training exercise.
Every one was happy.

---------- Post added at 08:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:19 PM ----------

Well that was interesting.

[Peter Laidler]

10 hour job to remove a Centurion engine. I have a funny feeling that it'll only be the very basic engine that could be used. Nothing else and in real life, it's not the bores/pistons/crank that wear out. They don't even sound the same. Even outside the tank on a test bed facility the meteor doesn't sound like a merlin. I'm not sure that it's a goer.........

[Brit plumber]

It is pretty much the basic short block that is the same. The ancillaries are lighter on the merlin and obviously has the supercharger. There are also different marks of the merlin that have substantial differences and not all are interchangeable without modification. That's the beauty of the modular design.

If anyone remembers the near loss of the BBMF Lanc a few years ago, the initial cause was thought to have been caused by the incorrect clearance set on the valve gear. This was required as the Left cylinder bank had been replaced during the winter overhaul. There was a lot more to the final outcome but the investigators believe that where it all started.