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F-35's Costs Climb Along With Concerns
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
:In message , Ricardo writes :Incidentally, a few sources have claimed that the Packard built Merlin, :whilst a superb engine, lacked the power levels of the Rolls Royce :version. This, it is claimed, was because the British kept secret the :composition of the phosphor-bronze bearings that they used in the :engine. No, I can't quote a source/s. : :On the other hand, I heard - from "old factory hands" lecturing on :manufacturing technique at Highbury College in 1988 - that a big :difference between Packard and Rolls-Royce was in fitting the cylinder :head. : :Rolls-Royce used a precision hand-scraped metal-to-metal fit. Very :effective, though extremely demanding in scarce skilled labour. Attempting to 'file flat' is a useful exercise for a trainee mechanical :engineer; it teaches a certain humility in demanding surface finishes) : :Packard cleaned up the castings, milled the mating faces approximately :flat (at least, compared to a metal-metal seal) and put a gasket between :them. I don't recall hearing tales of P-51s routinely or regularly :falling from the skies when their engines failed, nor of the Packard :Spitfires being execrated for unreliability (or, for that matter, lack f horsepower). Note that this is sort of the same approach that lost Germany the war. Everything was hand-finished to very high standards, while us sloppy folks cranked out ten times as many tanks as they could because we let the tolerances be looser and eliminated a lot of the skilled 'touch-labor' in the finishing stages. -- "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." -- Charles Pinckney |
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