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Old 15th Dec 2017, 15:42
  #11641 (permalink)  
Olympia 463
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Well I'm glad to hear that. The camshaft/rocker wear was the reason so many cylinder blocks needed changing before any other part of the engine was seriously worn. Who was doing the rebuilding and why?

One of my jobs when I was a piston engine performance engineer at R-R in the mid fifties was redesigning the supercharger quill drive to allow Merlins to be used for hydroplane racing on the great lakes in Canada. When the prop came out of the water during a sharp turn at a buoy the engine went to full overspeed RPM and seconds later back to 1500 as the prop re entered the water. The quill shafts were too flimsy for that kind of trick and soon broke. I came up with a much fatter one which fixed that problem. We never heard how they kept the water out of the supercharger intake though.