Otherwise known as an Americanised Rolls Royce Merlin.
you could buy them for a quid after the war. Maybe someone should have squirrelled a lot away and sold them now.
regards PhilipA
THERE’S A 28 LITRE, 1,100+ HP ALLISON V12 AERO ENGINE FOR SALE ON EBAY
There's A 28 Litre, 1,100+ HP Allison V12 Aero Engine For Sale On eBay
Have copied the pictures however not sure how to resize
The Allison V-1710 aircraft engine was originally intended for use in US military airships, it would later be used in a wide variety of aircraft during the Second World War including the original P-51 Mustang, the twin-engined Lockheed P-38 Lightning, the Bell P-39, the Curtiss P-40, and many others.
Known colloquially as “the Allison”, the V-1710 engine takes its model name from its displacement of 1,710.6 cu. in. (28 litres). It’s a 60º V12 with a single overhead cam per bank, four valves per cylinder, and it has a bore and stroke of 5.5 in. by 6 in. (139.7 mm by 152.4 mm).
Before and during WW2 the Allison V-1710 was offered in a number of configurations including naturally aspirated, supercharged, and turbo-supercharged. The engine you see here is one of the supercharged variants, with a large centrifugal supercharger mounted to the back of the engine in a similar configuration to the Rolls-Royce Merlin V12.
Almost 70,000 Allison V-1710 engines were built during the war, and in the years after hostilities ceased many of them ended up being sold into private hands. It would be in private ownership that the Allison would see some of its most extreme development, the engines were used for land speed racing, high performance powerboats, and in tractor pulling competition.
Highly tuned versions of the V-1710 were capable of well over 3,000 hp, more than triple the original power rating of the first V-1710s. The Allison is still a common engine in the tractor pulling world, there are companies that specialize in rebuilding them and supplying parts, as well as advice.
The Allison V-1710 you see here is a military surplus unit, it comes with its original WW2 documentation showing that it was rebuilt in 1944 after being pulled from service in 1943 due to metal being found on the magnetic sump plug. Of course it would need a rebuilt again now before any serious use.
The engine is for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $36,000 USD, it’s mounted to a steel engine stand and it comes in a wooden crate for shipping.
Otherwise known as an Americanised Rolls Royce Merlin.
you could buy them for a quid after the war. Maybe someone should have squirrelled a lot away and sold them now.
regards PhilipA
Not so. The Allison was designed in 1929 and first ran in 1930. The Merlin first ran in 1933. Some similarities. Both were V12's of near identical capacity, single overhead camshafts, four valves per cylinder, fork and blade rods with a variety of supercharger, carburetor, and magneto arrangements. I turned spanners on both way back in the early sixties building them for hydroplane racers. From the engine fitters point of view the Allison was superior. It had about half the number of parts as the Merlin and was much easier to service and rebuild. When I briefly worked for Ernie Nunn building up a Merlin for one of his boats I was offered a Mark sixty-something Merlin with the twin stage two speed superchargers for two hundred quid. Ernie was horrified. He said he had never paid more than ten quid for either a Merlin or Allison. Ernie was a tad careful with his brass. Merlins were made by Rolls-Royce at Derby, Crewe, and Glasgow, Ford Motor Coy at Manchester, Packard and Continental in the USA. Packard made about one third of them. Packard designed and made their own supercharger/accessory drive, a planetary arrangement. quite superior to the R-R drive. RR historians do not list any Australian production apparently regarding our output as assembly/partial manufacture. James Kirby still had Merlin special tools in 1963. I acquired some from a storeman in exchange for a quantity of Resch's Pilsener.
URSUSMAJOR
i would love one, but not for that price
Where were you in 1983. I sold one then I had owned for 20 years for $300. I bought it with the idea of a drag racer. Never got around to that but I did get it to run. Plumbed it and fired it up in the garage behind mum and dad's house in New Farm one Saturday afternoon. I thought I would have to put the hose on dad to quiet him down.
URSUSMAJOR
Yes , the Allison was a design of it's own.
I think people get a bit confused with the Packard V12s which I believe were manufactured by Packard under agreement from Rolls Royce.
From my experience it seemed the Rolls Royces found themselves mainly in aeroplanes and the Packards mainly in boats.
I would bet there are quite a few Packards still sitting around in some old dusty waterfront warehouses.
There were some Merlins that I knew of sitting around in Oakey,Qld , a few years ago.
The Allisons were apparently heavy on fuel compared with the Merlins. Charles Lindberg spent some time with one of the US Lightning squadrons based in PNG working on flight settings to (successfully) improve range. If the Allison is a bit pricey, there is another V12 at a more reasonable price on eBay UK at the moment: a Chinese tank engine (unused) military surplus in Albania.
My father would have made some of those tools.
A good indication of the relative place of the Allison and Merlin is the P51 Mustang. This was designed by North American in 1940 (in four months!) to meet a British request that they get a licence to build P-40s (which the British already had some of). Operational in 1942 they were no match for the Luftwaffe aircraft of the time (nor was the P-40). Installing the Merlin transformed the performance at altitude, and made it comparable to the German aircraft, without losing range. All future P-51s P-51B to P-51D were fitted with Merlins, specifically the Packard built version of the Merlin 66.
V-12 engines had been pretty much standard for large water cooled aircraft engines from about 1916, so there is nothing surprising that both engines were the same in this regard.
This particular engine would undoubtedly have been sold as scrap metal in 1946 or thereabouts, and as you say, around ten pounds was the going price. Of course, ten pounds ($20) was a lot more then than today - I saw one of my father's pay slips from the 1940s about fifty years ago, and his week's pay, for a toolmaker, was well under ten pounds.
Conceptually, someone has made a lot of money, but there are almost certainly better ways they could have spent the ten pounds seventy years ago!
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
Search AULRO.com ONLY! |
Search All the Web! |
---|
|
|
Bookmarks