Hello again,
Having just caught back up with the posts, it seems that many of the questions that were asked have already been answered, however, I can hopefully clear up a couple of other issues.
Pontius Nav,
The engines are in a state of basic undress, that is to say that they require all ancilliary equipment to be moved across from the old engine to the new engine. Regardless of the state of the ancilliary equipment, the engines are always referred to as ECUs. New engines will always require some dressing items to be fitted from the old ECU, as not all engines in the airframe are fitted with the same ancilliary equipment or require 'handed' fittings dependant on installation location, for instance, the #4 engine on the Vulcan is not fitted with a Hydraulic pump. There are a total of four 'Zero Hour' replacement engines owned by TVOC, and these were last overhauled in 1981, and have remained in their WVR bags since that date.
Blacksheep,
You do indeed recall correctly, however, this was not so much the Vulcan's Achilles Heel, as the Olympus's Achilles Heel. Rear bearing problems dogged the Olympus engine from start to finish in different guises, but occurences could be found in every model. XA909 with 104 engines became an early victim of this, losing its LP turbine over Anglesey in 1964, due to rear bearing failure. There were several instances of rear bearing failure on the 200 series, with the 300 series suffering even worse, with a number of aircraft lost to this, the 300 series also having its own unique blade resonance issues due to the extra compressor stage. The 300 series development was also set back considerably due to unique rear bearing lubrication issues at high level. As the Olympus design had yet more performance wrung out of the design, these issues became more prominent, with the Olympus 22R fitted to the TSR2 having its own "Rear Bearing Overtemp" lamps fitted to the console, to give warning of imminent failure. The issues were resolved to a degree in the 593 fitted to Concorde, but remained an issue until the retirement of the type, consequently, the 200 series is regarded as the more rugged of the type.
Regards the "Standard Motors" engine plate, unfortunately, all of the stored engines are fitted with Rolls Royce data plates, which read "Rolls Royce Bristol Olympus 20201" with the Bristol part of the designation painted out. Standard were one of several companied amalgamated to form Bristol Siddeley, including De Havilland Engines, Blackburn Engines, Napier Engines, Metropolitan Vickers and Bristol Engines. When Rolls Royce absorbed Bristol in 1966, they had already been heavily involved with the Olympus 22R for the TSR2 and were then deeply involved with the Olympus 593 for Concorde, so to suggest that they 'wouldn't touch the Olympus' is erroneous.
Sooty655,
Some great points you raise there, however despite being completely seperate engines, the 100 and 200 series are not enormously different, with the 200 being only marginally larger than the 100 series, but encompassing all of the 100 series Mods to produce a more powerful engine from the off. A 200 series engine was able to fit into a Vulcan B1 engine bay, and this was done so with XA891, in order to carry out flight testing. Unfortunately, a 300 series engine will not fit into a 200 series Vulcan without airframe structural modification, such is the size difference. You are totally correct, however, that the 300 is basically an upgraded 200, and was designed so that existing 200 series engines in production could be converted. An extra stage was fitted to the LP compressor, along with an enlarged delivery casing, and the 4th and 5th LP comp stages were constructed from stainless steel as opposed to aluminium, other than that, and a slightly different fuel schedule, they are the same engine.
As you know yourself, an engine change does not take that long at all to carry out and could easily be done before Duxford, so it is fairly obvious that there are more problems behind the scenes than meets the eye. The fact that an engine has not yet arrived from Bruntingthorpe could possibly have a deeper meaning, however, as I'm not in reciept of the current state of play within TVOC, I wouldn't like to speculate further.
Hope that' s cleared up a few issues
Flipflopman