Merlin XX

If it's the Merlin I'm thinking of (surely there can't be more than one), it's trailer mounted and gets taken to shows. The owner also sells videos of it running. It's an impressive sight but that's all the video shows. There's no commentary or details of the engine, just pictures of it running. Still worth the money though.

John

See

-- Dave Croft Warrington England

An machinist acquaintance of mine has a V-12 Merlin which came out of a tank. I saw it in his barn about a decade ago. He told me it was a slightly different engine than the aeroplane version. I think it had something to do with only one pair of valves per cylinder or only one magneto or something. The engine was pretty big!

It is/was not a Merlin, but a Meteor, the normally aspirated version of the Merlin used as a tank engine & built not by Rolls-Royce, but by Rover, the car manufacturer - it was a swap for Whittle's gas turbine franchise, smoothly arranged with Rover over lunch on the back of an envelope and a handshake by the then Chairman of Rolls-Royce, Lord Hives.

Aside from some stud resizing, material downgrades in view of its lower output (about 700BHP instead of 1,080 for a Merlin I - III), and slightly higher compression pistons, I believe it was identical.

regards,

Kim Siddorn.

600 hp for the prototype, and usually quoted as around 450 hp for most of the wartime Meteors. They didn't get over 600hp until the Centurions, then later (with fuel injection) the Conqueror of around 800hp.

Rolls-Royce also built significant numbers of them, before the the move to Rover.

Diesel Meteors were produced from quite early on (post war), but produced under 500hp.

A turbocharged Meteor was considered for later tanks, but it was considered too difficult to maintain in situ in the compact tank designs of the day (Chieftain engine swaps are of course the work of moments!). Also it was unhappy as a multi-fuel engine. Eventually the opposed-piston Leyland L60 was developed, which delayed the tanks entry into service by years, took a _long_ time to get anything near right, and gave the vehicle a reputation for being underpowered as even the last L60s were less powerful than the contemporary Meteors.

The most powerful of the lot appears to have been the last of the Meteorites. As the limit was usually the available transmissions and the engine itself had enormous tuning potential, the Meteorite (which stayed in service longer) outstripped the original Meteor.