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As a further thought after 18 months : the Peregrine development of the Kestrel had additional cylinder liner hold down bolts, more familiar to the world in the Merlin II engine. That is, the ‘normal’ hold down bolts would exert pressure on the top of the liner, while the additional hold down bolts would exert pressure on the bottom of the liner. I am looking for a corroded chunk of Merlin II bank to study this more.
The rubber O – ring at the base of the liner was also redesigned to a ‘trefoil’ cross section for better sealing. The wonderful bloke who did a lot of Kestrel rebuild work at Shuttleworth has passed on, but a lot of the magic was in the careful lapping in and mating of parts. His background was in subsea telecommunication cables, so he knew a lot about preventing leaks under great pressure. I can imagine that a lot of R&D went into ensuring the integrity of joints in submarine cables. One frustration, I understand, was pilots, allegedly, over enthusiastically boosting Kestrel engines, so conservative operation is a theme that recurs around the operation of antique machinery that lasts. One is tempted to look at the almost 85 years of engine development that has occurred since the Kestrel was first developed, to look at modern materials and methods adapted to extend the life of old engines. Modern cylinder liners that dramatically cut down the consumption of engine oil, so that the modern motorist can run a car for a year without a thought to oil, while for the the old engines a daily consumption of pints of oil was the norm. There was some talk of nitrogen filled sealing rings for cylinder liners, where the liner expands as it heats up, but it becomes less and less a Kestrel. Part of the history is letting future generations know that, unlike today, you couldn’t just start an engine and ‘go’. There was an elaborate ‘tea ceremony’ around starting and operating these engines, and if you didn’t extend the Hart radiator down by turning the wheel and stayed on the ground too long you might just cook an engine. Pilots notes for Harts and Demons stress this point.

Mr Rocketeer Esq, do any of your lists of Dunlop wheels describe material of construction, ie cast magnesium, with material specification? Got any wheel drawings ?
If you are constructing lists of wheels and their matching aircraft, I have a list from about 1935, which covers such things as Overstrands and Vildebeestes.

Changing your password regularly is good practice, as these details can be harvested by North Koreans looking to make cash or other nogoodniks. Recently I received an unsolicited email asking me to transfer USD5000 in Bitcoin within 24 hours otherwise video taken through my device camera of me flogging myself to video of, let’s say ‘aircraft with undercarriage deployed showing hydraulic system details’ would be broadcast to six random addresses in my email address book and all addresses after 24 hours if I did not pay. Bah, straight to delete ! I neither confirm nor deny that I would ever watch dodgy videos, but probably the folks on the random address list have ! The North Koreans are just punting on the fact that ‘99% of men are w*nkers and 1% are liars’ . Now given the choice between buying a Spitfire grip or transferring the Bitcoin I could probably live with embarrassment if they did have video and I got the grip. But what made me sit up was that the first line of the threat was basically a capture of my Key linked email and Key password. ” Dear { email user name}, your password is {Key password}. We know all about you..” Databases are hacked all the time. Some organisations with constrained IT budgets might not even know it. But if there is some knowledge of a compromised database then it would be good manners to inform users that this ‘may have occurred’ and to recommend a change of password, and probably to something not obvious like ‘Spitfire’. I do enjoy this forum. It is a valuable resource. I do look at the banner ads. But I do think that somebody at Key office employed a 16 year old son of a mate or office cleaner to do the IT because it would be a lower cost option and “Timmy is good with computers”. Timmy has been doing stacks of unpaid overtime to try and fix things and there is no PR budget either so it really is random whether you get the forum or not with no explanation ever given. Less goodwill would evaporate if Timmy, or Steve the Cleaner, his Dad, just communicated about what was going on. At least advise when drop outs for maintenance would occur. I am sure it will settle down by 2020.