Does anyone know what this was fitted to. I assume it doesn`t necessarily refer to engine coolant, because that isn`t usually referred to as water.
Cheers
Pete
By: Arabella-Cox - 16th February 2012 at 14:05
Could it be a coolant pressure guage, intended for aero-engines with an evaporative cooling system?
Here’s what Aeronautics, Volume II (circa 1938) has to say about them:
“This is usually only fitted where the engine-cooling system is what is known as “evaporative”. In such systems the water is allowed to boil and the steam is subsequently condensed and returned to the engine in liquid form. A positive pressure is created in the system in order to keep the vaporising temperature somewhat above the normal boiling point and so reduce the quantity of steam generated. The guage indicates this pressure.”
It wouldn’t be unusual for the Air Ministry to stock up on instruments for monitoring equipment still not available to the service. So, gauges in stock awaiting engines never properly developed.
The only other suggestion I can offer would be water injection, but I ain’t no expert on aero-engine technology?
By: Graham Adlam - 26th January 2012 at 13:57
This gauge looks wartime to me the Mosquito also carried a drinking water tank, It should have a referenece on the side that would give you a date. Certainly unusual never seen one like it.
By: Lincoln 7 - 26th January 2012 at 11:50
Pete. The only thing I can find thats anything like it, is Oil Pressure Guages, as on R/H side of Spit instruments.
I guess it was made for a very specific aircraft.
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: Lincoln 7 - 26th January 2012 at 11:31
[QUOTE=MerlinPete;1849524]
We are building a Griffon at the moment for an inland powerboat which simply uses the lake water as coolant, straight into the engine. I have visions of poached fish being ejected out of the exhausts.
Pete, Get to the point, your building a flying boat 😀
Jim.
Lincoln .7
By: MerlinPete - 26th January 2012 at 11:19
I did wonder about drinking water Pogno, so Tony`s Elsan idea may not be so far off either. The capilliary doesn`t mean it has to be close to the tank, the engine instruments on most Lancasters and Yorks are capilliary, of the same design. A gauge with that scale could easily have a normal operating pressure of 15 to 20 psi, which is about right.
Baloffski, I agree that cooling seawater would be termed water as opposed to the engine`s own cooling water, which is called coolant. I don`t know, but pressure is quite likely to be the way it is monitored rather than temparature, which is measured in the engine.
We are building a Griffon at the moment for an inland powerboat which simply uses the lake water as coolant, straight into the engine. I have visions of poached fish being ejected out of the exhausts.
Pete
By: baloffski - 26th January 2012 at 09:06
What about an Air Sea Rescue Launch? I am guessing a lot here but I imagine that the engines would suck in great gouts of oggin for cooling and as it was an RAF asset it would have used the 6A prefix for guages the same as an aircraft would?
By: pogno - 26th January 2012 at 08:56
It might have been for a drinking water supply for something like a York which had a 13 1/2 gallon tank for that purpose. The text says that the capillery pipe has been cut off which suggests the instrument would have been fairly close to the tank it was reading, ie in a galley. Against my own argument is the high reading shown on the gauge, I would think a water tank would only need ten or so pounds to feed a tap, not forty or fifty.
Richard
Sign In
January 24, 2012 at 10:01 pm