Centarus Powered Sea Fury!

A bit off thread, but can I just add my ‘welcome back to the Forum Keithmac’ tuppence.

To those who don’t know, Keithmac has in the past contributed some fascinating and very helpful threads on matters mechanical (with diagrams) to help enthusiastic numptys like me. Keithmac, your threads were appreciated and missed!!

Keithmac attended the Scottish Forum meetup and gave an excellent presentation on the Tornado , I know he has a “Big Bristols” presentation – be nice to see during the next meetup – maybe when Setter is over here ??

A bit off thread, but can I just add my ‘welcome back to the Forum Keithmac’ tuppence.

To those who don’t know, Keithmac has in the past contributed some fascinating and very helpful threads on matters mechanical (with diagrams) to help enthusiastic numptys like me. Keithmac, your threads were appreciated and missed!!

BWB,
Are you taking the P–s, well I mean a good day at the office indeed.
Why do after dinner what you can leave till just before knock off eh?

Goonter, I believe is still running around looking for some kind of hot sticky liquid. 🙂

R2800’s etc were only any good when they put them in farm machinery saved on the more powerful deisel units I was told only decent round engines were made by Bristol

DIGBY

Glad to see you back

With such harsh comments about radials tut tut

Hope you had a good day at the office today

Hows goonter??

We had considerable discussion on this subject about a year to 18 months ago. Having worked on both types of engine I can assure you that a properly maintained sleeve valve engine is just as reliable as any poppet valve engine, and you don’t have to check and reset valve clearances every couple of hundred flying hours! Checking and resetting valve clearances on a radial engine is one of the most time consuming and tedious jobs an engine fitter has to do, and if you get it even a little bit wrong the performance of the engine suffers big time! Give me big Bristols any time!

Keith Mac – Ancient engine fitter!

Welcome back to the Forum Keith !!!

R2800’s etc were only any good when they put them in farm machinery saved on the more powerful deisel units I was told only decent round engines were made by Bristol

Oh Robbo, I suppose you’re also in on Andy’s big “revenge” scheme to get me back. I know I know, he’s already got Melv involved. Poor fellow.

He’ll sit and plan in a darkened room for the next five years coming up with some elaborate plan that will cost millions of dollars and thousands of lives. And when I least expect it, then he will spring his trap.

We’ll see Tom Cruise win an Academy Award for “The Few” before this little caper comes to fruition

Just another thread…”gone to the dogs”.

See, it’s all Andy’s fault 🙂

How do you turn ’em black & white?

Just off my lathe…..

Thats why the FAA/RN accept are Lovely Chance-Vought Corsair with its very powerfull engine, but of coarse are CommenWealth Cousins had to get used to that big Torqie thing up front. :p 😉

Hmmmm……..don’t think we were ever in need of having to get used to torque :p
IIRC didn’t the USN dismiss the Corsair as being too big and powerful to operate from a carrier, so said give ’em to the USMC to operate from land, and then the FAA said if you don’t won’t them we’ll ‘av ’em…..
And we proceeded to operate them from far smaller carriers then the USN were ever going to…….
And then the USN had to start using them otherwise they would’ve looked a right bunch of nancy boys…………. 😉 😀

The thing that held back the Sabre was the manufacturing process, a process that Bristol had cracked and would not share. That is until some very senior political clout was brought to bear. 😎 😎 😎 Then ironically just as Pratt and Witney was about to start production of the C series R2800 (the version that is able to produce all that wonderful reliable power and not the version that did most of the fighting) they had their machine tools diverted to Napier to produce the Sabre. Bet that got the fur flying. 😀 😀 😀

I ain’t done nothin!!!

Wasn’t me, guv…it was that Andy bloke.

Mr. Patterson,

What are you trying to get yourself Banned from Duxford with those Fighting Comments 😀 , we all know that the R2800 and R3650 were a far Superior Crafted Engine :p .

Boy are they alot easier to work on then those English items :rolleyes: .

Thats why the FAA/RN accept are Lovely Chance-Vought Corsair with its very powerfull engine, but of coarse are CommenWealth Cousins had to get used to that big Torqie thing up front. :p 😉

Cheers Crazymainer

All I know is that a certain person, who’s initials are Andy in Beds, said that…wait, I wrote it down…oh, here it is…

“Sleeve valves suck…”

There, told you so.

Just imagine if Hawker had fitted a R2800 to the Typhoon. How much time and money would that have saved (after they figured out how to keep the tails from falling off, of course).

HHIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!

Oh, lighten up! 😀

We had considerable discussion on this subject about a year to 18 months ago. Having worked on both types of engine I can assure you that a properly maintained sleeve valve engine is just as reliable as any poppet valve engine, and you don’t have to check and reset valve clearances every couple of hundred flying hours! Checking and resetting valve clearances on a radial engine is one of the most time consuming and tedious jobs an engine fitter has to do, and if you get it even a little bit wrong the performance of the engine suffers big time! Give me big Bristols any time!

Keith Mac – Ancient engine fitter!

The Centaurus used the same bore as the Herc with a longer stroke so the sleeves would have been very similar. I am sure the issue is one of available skills and knowledge rather than basic reliability of the engine. One difference was from memory the Herc had the sleeve drives at the front but the Centaurus drives are front and back for the respective cylinder banks. Cooling fin area around the cylinder head was increased giving the visual impression of much larger cylinders.

Mr. Andy has been doing some research recently concerning the British government’s investment in sleeve valve technology during the war. Maybe he can enlighten us with some facts and figures…

Sorry to hear about Ellsworth’s problem in Camarillo. Hope it’s nothing serious.

Steve

so thats what Andy does in his shed..

Mr. Andy has been doing some research recently concerning the British government’s investment in sleeve valve technology during the war. Maybe he can enlighten us with some facts and figures…

Sorry to hear about Ellsworth’s problem in Camarillo. Hope it’s nothing serious.

Steve

The Bristol Hercules Engine, forerunner of the Centaurus, achieved the highest T.B.O. of any radial engine. So in their day reliability wise they were the best of the bunch.

Perhaps we don’t have the skills or knowledge or tooling nowadays to maintain that reliability?