Good clip! Yeah, the landing mishap shown was at Wroughton. That’s where I met Clive (odd chap) and bought his (not very well written) book, while the aircraft- you simply can’t call it a Spitfire- was on the flightline, looking a bit bent.

When it had it’s bigger accident, I thought it was the one-piece, glued together for the life of the aeroplane wing spars that were cut through?

“Odd chap, not very well written, you simply can’t call it a Spitfire”

I’m surprised you didn’t ask for your money back…… I take my hat off to the man, who turns his dream into reality, who builds a spitfire, restores another A/C so he can learn to fly his spitfire, and writes a book about the whole saga; most people would get halfway through chapter 1 of their book before giving up let alone building a flying A/C , restoring another, and learning to fly.

I have to agree, but I did enjoy the programme as a whole, and was surprised to learn that she was only the 16th woman to ever fly, but it did start evoking a strange feeling of dejavu (cue monty python sketch!) when the “eye witness” that placed them on board a US ship ,was a “navy medic”!!

Too young, but not to google , sold for £34k; which one was the dummy?

To save yourself a lot of grief, I would suggest to cut the flange off, very accurately, outboard of the weld swing it through 180 and re-weld and dress, locating the two parts in a simple fixture. I think you will find that the stubs will then clear the harness and have the correct relationship to the cowlings. Of course left will then service right and vice versa.

Try just the one first. 🙂

Mark

A simple solution, but because the engine is sitting 6″ further back than it should, you are 1 stub out when it comes to lining up the cowlings.

If you fabricate a “manifold” in a roughly triangular section (toblerone tube) but tapering from front to back, you can extend the manifold forward of the front cylinders and bolt the front stub forward from the port so that they all line up with the cowling apertures.

The manifolds if kept as narrow as possible will only push the stubs out about 1″-1 1/2″ more than standard, the advantage is that you can use the stubs as they are, because the “manifold” corrects the angle of the dangle (appologies for the technical terms used!)

Yes the engine’s in the right way round, been thinking about the stubs (half the night!) and I think that Pete’s right (assuming that there is a kink in them) the flanges are welded on wrong, as the studs are closer together on the top than the bottom; they won’t clear the cowlings inverted, but the best option is to get a couple of manifolds made up, they can’t be seen with the cowlings on, and the “stubs ” can be realigned to suit.

Its not a bad idea to water cool the exhaust gasses, but it makes the fabrication much harder , because if it isn’t water tight you either have water in the engine ,or a very high pressure cooling system! ;don’t forget that if you cool the exhaust gasses ,you will be adding that extra heat (in the cooling system) to that which you are already trying to get rid of.

I won’t laugh, I’ve had 4 of them, however I never got the bonnet to crack, guess I wasn’t trying hard enough.

With you having had 4 ,and me only 1, its hard to say “you were lucky”, probably I was unlucky, but did you get any overheating problems? as they all had the rad almost on the road.

The other thing with the Scimitar was that when you opened up the bonnet ,you thought that you’d been robbed, and someone had made off with your engine ,and left a bald tyre (in it’s place) as a sort of bad joke!

Back on topic, Graham, if you’ve moved the engine back 6″ approx ,what are you going to do about the last exhaust stub (each side) ; you are right to be concerned about the exhaust heat, looking at the gestation of the Mosquito, I believe Halford said ” the next A/C that we build should be designed around the exhaust system”, he was probably thinking if the Vampire!!