Hallard Howcroft, was a wheelright, and carriage builder, at that time, (1908) their premises were at Oxford road and Stockton road (west Hartlepool?) the business was known as Howcroft carriage & engineering co; they were noted as supplying small steam engine boilers to the trade, is it possible that the engine is of their own manufacture?

Perhaps we should have a dedicated “where are they now” thread? (seriously)

Good to see that you’ve got a full display itinerary, hopefully I’ll catch up with the R2800 and you at legends.

I do have an engine in about 10,000 bits, I am missing a cyl block,one inlet manifold, and a pair of rocker covers, (the last pair managed to evade my clutches for £200- on ebay….)

I do wonder whether maybe the way forward, is to purchase a good meteor, and use everything that I can, (including one rocker cover) and reassemble it into my Packard crankcase; I’ve been on the look out for a two stage blower for a number of years, but they are like hens teeth, so I’ll probably be using the XX series one.

Presumably you have to pull the blades through on the radial, how is that accomplished with such short blades (or do you take the plugs out?).

How is the price of fuel affecting you displays this year?

Is that possible?
You would think that the internal structure would be too different between the two different fusalage dimemsions.

The conversion was accomplished in 2 different ways, one was to cut all the frames from 11 to 18 at the horzontal datum point, and reattach new build top halves, and a new spine; the disadvantage with this method, is that the low back frames are a thicker gauge (18g) than the high back ones (20g), and you have very obvious joining plates, which are visible at the cockpit end.

The second way is to replace the whole of the frames and the spine, which is asthetically better, but you lose a lot of aeroplane, (especially if you replace the skin as well).

Sheetwise it has taken only 5 sheets of 2024-0 to get all our frames cut plus a lot of the smaller parts can be nested in the scrap areas.Time taken to cut out is about an hour on the waterjet cutter.Another replica is here…
http://www.fighterwerks.com/index.htm

I think that they might have to up the fuel capacity from 68 gallons, if they are going to run an Allison.

As fas as I’m aware, such items can be made by any non CAA certified engineering co. but, traceability and accountability are the watch words, the material used, must be of the correct spec,(with paperwork to prove this), and the work signed off by a CAA accredited engineer, who, unless he is happy with the work (i.e authorised it in the first instance), will not do.

I assuming they did clean out the oil cooler & lines etc after the first engine fragged?

Oh, I wonder if they thought to do that…. that would be standard practice, if it was only a Ford mundaneo, and not a priceless piece of history.

I have receved a PM suggesting that this has been a problem in the past; one would have thought, that being the case , extra attention would have been paid to the oil lines, tanks, coolers etc, but I stand to be corrected (as the man wearing the orthopaedic shoes frequently says)