Where to Get a Rolls Royce Merlin

[nomorecatering]

Flug werk are offering kits to build a P-51 Mustang replica, 100% full scall ecact copies, but mewly made. So if you complete an airframe, wher would you get an engine for it.

Do places like Vintage V12's sell engines or just overhaul them.

[sycamore]

You could try the `Tractor -pulling` fraternity,probably find more Allisons than Merlins,but as it had Allison at the beginning,shouldn`t be a problem...Here,we just pull `birds`,darn-under most tractors are called Sheila anyway,are`nt they ??

[Bigt]

Merlins are rare in tractor pulling. Griffons and Allisons are the norm. Neither of which would come with any papers to enable them to fly again. A friend of mine has over 30 Allisons on racks, they will never fly again

[chevvron]

There's a company in California which re-builds Merlins for aviation use; it's basically a company which does racing car engines and and I just can't remember the name - sorry.
I remembered - Dave Zeuschel Racing Engines. I seem to remember a stack of crates at Blackbushe during the Doug Arnold era which were supposed to contain (Packard?) Merlins and they had Dave Zeuschel as the senders address on them.

[PLovett]

If you want to do a search I seem to recall that the Smithsonian aviation and space magazine did an article on US Merlin engine rebuilders some years ago. They rebuild them for the air-racing fraternity.

[603DX]

I would think it worthwhile to consult Maurice Hammond of Eye Tech Engineering. He has refurbished several Merlins for flight use.

[mr fish]

ah, now this brings me back to a story in FLYPAST a few years back.

the article related to rumours of new, crated, "cosmolene" protected merlins buried somewhere in india just after the end of the war.

some enterprising soul was attempting to put together a expedition to (hopefully) retrieve said items.


anyone have any further info??

[stepwilk]

If you want to do a search I seem to recall that the Smithsonian aviation and space magazine did an article on US Merlin engine rebuilders some years ago. They rebuild them for the air-racing fraternity.

Hey, thanks for remembering. I wrote that piece.

The big Merlin rebuilder in California is Mike Nixon's Vintage V12s, in Tehachapi. He now also does a variety of other engines, including DBs and BMW 801s.

[stepwilk]

ah, now this brings me back to a story in FLYPAST a few years back. the article related to rumours of new, crated, "cosmolene" protected merlins buried somewhere in india just after the end of the war. some enterprising soul was attempting to put together a expedition to (hopefully) retrieve said items.

Somebody on this forum, or perhaps it's Key Publishing's, has as his signature something like "If I had a dollar for every story of buried Merlins I've heard, I'd be rich."

[Wander00]

In the same category as alleged caches of Spitfires and Lancasters!

[Proplinerman]

Well, it does happen sometimes: the Swiss Connie people managed to track down several Super Connie engines (Wright R3350s?), in a yard in Belgium. They had been overhauled for an African customer in the late 1960s, who didn't pay up. They were then put in special canisters, filled with a protective gas and forgotten about, till the Swiss very enterprisingly tracked them down more than thirty years later.

[Capot]

Mr Tony Budge, owner of AF Budge Aviation, ran a surplus parts business at Gamston Airfeild, near Retford in the UK, selling mostly ex-military equipment. He even had a Scud and launcher there.

The business folded with collapse of the the Budge family's house of cards in the early 1990s.

But there I saw, among the most extraordinary collection of bits in a large hangar filled with this stuff (incl some 25-pdr guns), a number of crated and unused Merlin engines, still in the original storage grease. As I recall there were two stacks of 5 or 6 crates, but that may be wrong.

A search could well start with finding out what happened to all the equipment, which could lead to the Merlins.

AFAIK in around 1992 all the Budge's clutch of businesses apart from AF Budge Aviation were liquidated, which would mean that the assets would have been sold by the liquidator. AF Budge Aviation itself was sold, I believe, as a going concern to the owner of Polypipe and renamed Gamston Aviation. Someone there may know about the Merlins.

[Rollingthunder]

The Allison was an inferior engine. The Mustang did not reach her full potential until they were fitted with Merlins manufactured under licence By Packard. If you find one it won't be cheap.

[Nopax,thanx]

Roush Aviation would be able to supply a flyer...old engines do come up from time to time; as an operator we have collected a few over the years from various sources, and we now have about a dozen spares of various marks, plus of course the installed ones in our Spit V, P-51D and P-40F (soon to appear at an airshow near you )

The one thing to be wary of is the "Merlin" that turns out to be a Rolls-Royce Meteor tank engine; very similar but not of any use as a flying engine. Most of the Merlins on Fleabay are in fact Meteors.

[onetrack]

Has no-one noticed the savage irony in the construction of full size Spitfire replicas, by a German company?? Is that rumbling sound that I hear, the spinning of 10,000 WW2 RAF/RAAF/RCAF airmen, in their graves??

I have no doubt there are numerous Merlins stored underground. However, the chances of them being found, are 1 in 100,000... and the chances of them being useable (for aircraft power), are 1 in 10,000,000.

When you see pictures of the huge stockpiles of damaged aircraft at the end of WW2, and the post-WW2 efforts to destroy anything that was no longer required in a peacetime environment... it makes one realise why the stories of crated components and buried equipment, had some grounding in personal experience.

However, equipment and components buried, dumped or abandoned at the cessation of WW2, were never ever prepared for long-term storage, in a manner that would enable them to be recovered and used.
The cosmolene wrappings, crating and other protection, were only designed to last a few years at best... and at that, in protected storage.

At best, a buried tunnel or bunker, where equipment had been stored would be the most likely source of anything useable.
However, tunnels and bunkers were nearly always used for personnel protection, and components were usually stored in above-ground buildings.

Dumped, buried, burnt, scrapped or saved in Australia after WW2

[Michael111]

Hi

This may be a good place to start.

Aviation Jersey - Aviation Products

Cheers

111

[NutLoose]

51-Factory Merlin Engine Overhaul

[Stanwell]

Thanks for bringing this up again, Nutty.
Just BTW, Vintage V12s can do anything for you - it just depends on how fat your wallet is.
As for the Allison V-1710 being a piece of .... , well, it's "horses for courses", isn't it?
They certainly worked well enough for us.

[megan]

The Allison was an inferior engine. The Mustang did not reach her full potential until they were fitted with Merlins

There were those who operated the Mustang in the European theatre, the RAF in particular, who thought the Allison was the superior engine. The RAF originally bought the 'stang as an Army co-operation aircraft, replacing the P-40, hence its use in the low level role. They considered the Allison superior because of the abuse it could withstand and its lower fuel consumption, whereas the Merlin was a more delicate piece of machinery. Such was the respect for the Allison version in the low altitude role that an attempt was made to keep it in production when the Merlin was introduced, to no avail of course. Introduction of the Merlin merely changed an aircraft from one optimised in the low altitude role to one optimised for the high altitude mission.

[joy ride]

I too remember that Smithsonian article, which I read on a regular trip to Texas about 12-15 years ago, my business partner subscribed and each visit required a fair bit of catching up!