Originally Posted by
421dog
Fareastdriver , 21st Jul 2020 01:37
The Mustang only worked because the British replaced the Allison engine with a Merlin as an experiment.
Hooie...
I’ve met multiple times with all the guys that run the Roush V12 shop in Detroit, and hands down, the Packard is their iteration of choice.
Per their critique, the original Allisons were far from ready for prime time, the British RR’s were “Hand fit, but only once“, and “never again”” while the Packards were “built to tenths, and everything still fits,” (80 Years later) engine to engine, part to part.
Here we go again. The myths that surround the Merlins built by Packard still swirl around. Believe me, I worked on Merlins in the 1950s (I was a graduate apprentice in the Rolls-Royce Hillington factory) and one day we decided to see if a supercharger built in America would fit an engine built in the UK. There had been a lot of nonsense talked about Packard 'tightening up the tolerances' etc. We had dozens of Packard 66s out in the yard in the original packing cases (the batch built right at the end of the war and never needed), and brought one into the experimental shop, and removed the supercharger. We brought a supercharger off one of our Merlins and having inserted the locating dowels, we offered it up to the Packard. Perfect fit - it just slid on to the dowels with no problems. We didn't go as far as bolting it on and testing the engine, but I have no doubt it would have worked fine. We overhauled a batch of these 66s and they were fitted to Heinkel 111s which the Spanish Airforce needed when the German engines reached the end of their lives, There was NO material difference between a Hillington engine and a Packard one if you excepted the makers plate. Packard were issued with a complete set of gauges for every part of the Merlin, and I have no doubt they used them.