Thread: B-36 origins
View Single Post
  #9  
Old 6th January 2018, 16:58
Tony Kambic Tony Kambic is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Virginia
Posts: 397
Tony Kambic will become famous soon enough
Re: B-36 origins

One of the more interesting things for me about the B-36 was how to change the air cooled P&W R-4360 engines into pushers. Took me some time to investigate. Having participated in rebuilding two R-2800s, and learning their structure, I could not see how it was easy to turn the engine around to become a pusher and maintain the ram air cooled aspect.

P&W engineers must have had some foresight as it was relatively easy. These P&W radials had each cylinder bolted to the crankcase with approx. 35 nuts on studs. Each cylinder had appropriate baffles to direct cooling. What they did for the B-36 was turn the engine around to be a pusher, then rotate each cylinder on it's base 180 degrees so the baffles faced in the proper direction so they still directed the ram air. Then some slight re-routing of the intake and exhaust pipes, and resetting the cam timing and the engine was an air cooled pusher.

Tony
Reply With Quote