Merlin HP

Arrived this week what a beast!! This Packard 266 is hopefully going in the MkXVI:D

Extremely apparent evidence there of the Royce philosophy of “stitching” components together with lots of small fasteners.

Arrived this week what a beast!! This Packard 266 is hopefully going in the MkXVI

Thanks for the picture & update Fluffy.

I meant to correct my post earlier, but never mind! 😮

So, what MK of Merlin does MK356 have at present?

Cheers

Paul

[QUOTE=Bradburger;1078343]
(I seem to recall Fluffy mentioning that they where fitting a two stage blower to one of the 224’s from the Lanc to go in the MKIX),

Arrived this week what a beast!! This Packard 266 is hopefully going in the MkXVI:D

Thanks guys,

There is a lot of info. there for me to digest.

Steve

Merlin Pete is right in that a few MKIX’s have two speed, single stage Merlins, such as the 25, 224, & 225, whilst the ‘Baby’ Spits often have the 35.

I think MK732 had a 224, and I thought that PT462 did too.

However, MH434 did have a Merlin 66 (it’s having an engine change now – I don’t know what will be fitted) but I think it’s possible to fit a two speed single stage blower to one (I seem to recall Fluffy mentioning that they where fitting a two stage blower to one of the 224’s from the Lanc to go in the MKIX), so it’s possible that maybe one of these was fitted to 434, but I was always under the impression that it had the correct supercharger, as when I’ve seen pictures of it with the cowlings off, the supercharger takes up more space than that of the two speed, single stage variants.

I don’ t have the pilots notes for the MKIX to hand, but it mentions the gear change altitudes. And I did have some power ratings for the Merlin 61/63//66/70 somewhere – I’ll see if I can dig them out.

One thing to bare in mind is that often even though a Spitfire might be listed as having Merlin 45 for example, it might be built around the block or use parts of a different Mark.

I seem to recall that the engine they are rebuilding for AR501 was an example of this.

[EDIT]

Here’s a link that has the Horsepower ratings (you’ll need to scroll down a bit) for the M63, 66 & 70:

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spit9v109g.html

You might also like to check this page too, as it has a M66 HP chart:

http://www.spitfireperformance.com/spitfire-IX.html

Cheers

Paul

It is not possible to separate the two stages of a Merlin supercharger, but many Spitfires flying now do so on single-stage engines, typically late type Merlin 25s, 35s and 500s.

The critical altitude for these is around 10,000ft in MS gear (Merlin 35s are single-speed anyway) and I would have to check the figure for FS gear but I think it could be around 18,000ft?

These engines are mostly rated at around 1600hp.

Pete