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Originally Posted by Juha
Hello again Six Nifty .50s
I'm not sure if this is relevant, but I once read that there were problems with the bearings of the Pachard Merlins and the the reason given in the article was bad quality control at Pachards or at one of its sub-contractors or to be more precis the reason given was the place where the machine-tool operators poured their stale Coke.That isn't relevant to Merlins of the Hurricanes of the 43 Sqn but maybe to the Mustangs and to the Spits, if they were Mk XVIs and the failures happened in certain timeframe.
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Hello Juha.
Only two of the 39 Spitfires on that list were Mk XVI and they belonged to No. 421 Squadron. Because the engines were changed so frequently it is possible that both planes had their Packards replaced with Rolls-Royce Merlins before they crashed.
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Originally Posted by Juha
maybe the British only tried to put the blame of the bearing failures on Americans
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No one should be surprised. Here is something you'll never find in Rolls- Royce press releases:
In May 1943 (long before Packard-powered Spitfire XVIs were in service), RAF Fighter Command informed the USAAF that on average the Allison engine lasted about three times longer than Merlins in-between bearing failures. They noted the V-1710-39 was routinely overboosted to 72" Hg manifold pressure for up to twenty minutes at a time without damaging the engine. They said that the Allison could get them home even when the bearings were ruined, which is more than they could say for the Merlin. They also told the USAAF that the Merlin did not run efficiently below 1600 rpm and the higher fuel consumption made that engine an undesirable alternative for Tac/R missions. Finally the RAF recommended that the automatic boost controls should be removed from all P-51 airplanes.
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Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen
The civilian Merlin was not rejected for being unreliable! The fact is that civilian Merlin were approaching 2000 hrs TBO.
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I doubt that was anywhere near the average. It sounds like more company propaganda from Rolls-Royce, and sales were poor.