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https://www.facebook.com/devonlivenews/ ... 347313786/

A friend of a friend hand built this little run-about in South Africa, but having relocated to Devon has now got the old girl finished and going.

He's a solicitor by profession, but clearly very capable with his hands.

Engine starts at 17:15

We have a Flying Fortress in our area, flying out of the willow run air museum in Michigan, usually at low altitude. Kind of the opposite of this video, first you wonder what the racket is, then you run outside and realize what your hearing. Both are tremendous sounds, and symbols of a past era.

its an ugly looking thing though isn't it!

its also utter bollocks that its a rolls royce merlin from a Spitfire, its a rover metor engine from a centurian tank that has had a pair of rolls royce rocker boxes fitted to it. still an impressive engine, but a merlin it is not.

a spitfire merlin is supercharged and the drive (for the prop) comes out the front.........slightly more difficult to fit to a motor car and a much more valuable engine.......

Rich is right. They growl the same but they ain't the same. The South Africa connection was interesting because they used/use 500(?) Centurions and upgraded the engines on a large proportion of those remaining. So there's plenty of redundant Meteor engines there

http://www.baiv.nl/blog/2017/02/09/limi ... cessories/ cheap as chips

Gray wrote:http://www.baiv.nl/blog/2017/02/09/limi ... cessories/ cheap as chips

just goes to show what a swizz it is when people claim to be using a proper 'spitfire merlin'

rover meteor 'new in box' = £9885

rr merlin 'new in box' = £ couple of hundred grand i guess

in the good old days Rolls Royce would have taken him to court!

Do I recall back in the 70's a chap fitted a proper Merlin into a road car (an American car ISTR) and fitted a RR grille on the front.

ISTR it was featured in Mayfair of all mags (well I was a pre pubescent boy back than )

Rolls Royce sued him for copyright I also seem to recall?

Jono wrote:Do I recall back in the 70's a chap fitted a proper Merlin into a road car (an American car ISTR) and fitted a RR grille on the front.

ISTR it was featured in Mayfair of all mags (well I was a pre pubescent boy back than )

Rolls Royce sued him for copyright I also seem to recall?

I think that is John Dodd's meteor engined car. Not a Merlin. As Rich stated Merlin's drive from the front because of the supercharger. I have never heard of a Merlin in any form of road or land vehicle. Lots of claimed ones but no real ones.

No, it was Motor magazine, not Mayfair!

And it did have a Merlin

http://theamazoeffect.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... beast.html

Jono wrote:No, it was Motor magazine, not Mayfair!

And it did have a Merlin

http://theamazoeffect.blogspot.co.uk/20 ... beast.html

All the pictures I can see of the engine in the Beast are Meteor.
The Merlin cylinder heads have the fixings for the exhaust stubs set in a square pattern, the Meteor ones are set in a rhombus pattern.
The pictures in the link show the head studs in a rhombus pattern which would indicate a Meteor top end. The heads are different because the Merlin has two exhaust exits on the head face whereas the Meteor has a bifurcation into the head giving an oval shape on the head.

The Merlin has cross bolted crank main bearings the meteor does not, this is difficult to see in the images in the link but in the last picture showing the view of the alternator drive from the ancillary jack shaft, where the bolts should be, they are not.

This all points to a Meteor, not a Merlin. No matter what the journalist or the owner says....

Crikey and I thought fake news was a modern phenomenon.

...seems to be an awful lot of misinformation out there :

https://www.classicdriver.com/en/articl ... olls-royce

and then..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxMxFE37Sxw

I think it was john dodd who set the ball rolling with the 'merlin in a road car' story as it was the first one to be built (bar that 4x4 truck chassis speed car)

no one ever grips the owners about it, its just like works cars..........................