Rolls-Royce Diesels
Kim Siddorn
to fire engines & the like?
Regards,
Kim Siddorn.
"
John Stevenson
We knew them just by horsepower, Rolls 220 and 240 were a common
engine in this range.
Crap engines maintenance wise.
I was going to say they used to leak oil where there were no joints
but the problem was there were millions of joints.
The oil feed gallery pipe inside the sump was made up of short bits of
pipe and die cast housing with double O rings in everything.
I kid you not when I tell you at around the mid 1980's a head set was
£75 and a sump set was nearly £300 as it contained over 200 O rings.
They did last if you could keep oil in. We used to pull them apart at
about 400,000 for bearings, liners and pistons. Most were still on
original injectors at this mileage but pumps had probably had three
rebuilds, again usually for pissing oil out.
We ran a Seddon Atkinson up to 600,000 before it was scrapped, the
engine is probably powering some Chinese junk at this moment.
--
Regards,
John Stevenson
Nottingham, England.
Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-
http://www.homeworkshop.org.uk/
Prepair Ltd
wrote:
>What was the typology for Rolls-Royce Diesels? The big straight sixes fitted
As John S says, the Eagle series was the main automotive range, going up to
360hp IIRC in turbo form, but they also made big industrial diesels like the
C6NFL and C6TNFL, normally aspirated and turbo respectively, they also have the
big tank V8 and V12 engines and stationary versions of those as well.
As they were up in Shrewsbury, I always liked to assume a connection with
Sentinel diesels who were there, but never found any connection that was well
enough documented.
It all went to Perkins eventually, and now Cat owns the whole industry almost.
I was at First Great Western's maintenance depot at Old Oak Common today, and
while waiting for a battery to go through a discharge cycle on one of our
machines, I wandered over to where they were assembling new DMU engine rafts,
made up of a fabricated frame with a damm great Cummins QSK19 straight six,
almost of Gardner L3 proportions...
The block is very straight-edged, ie it has no rounded corners, very
utilitarian, but with a turbo on this thing runs up to nearly 800hp from 19
litres and over 2000ft-lbs of torque.
The installation was nicely engineered, with what looks like a Graviner
Fire-Wire running round the outside of the bay.
Peter
Peter
--
Peter A Forbes
Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK
pre...@easynet.co.uk
http://www.prepair.co.uk
Tom
We knew them as dogs...:-(
Tom
Phil
"Kim Siddorn" <kim.s...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:47o6a6F...@individual.net...
It was a standby gen set in a water treatment works.
My classification would be take three steps back and check your life
insurance - it sounded like a high speed bag of nails about to rupture.
Sorry can't provide more sensible typology.
Phil
Paul Swindell
they went bankrupt in 1971, then everything non aero was sold off and diesel
engine production went to Sentinel at Shrewsbury.
Also it was in the local paper the other week that the JCB engine plant was
given the Royal opening. They didn't like the idea of buying engines off
their biggest competitor after Cat bought Perkins so designed their own.
Richard H Huelin
> fitted to fire engines & the like?
The marine versions were reputed to make fine anchors.
Kim Siddorn
a string of aero and automotive successes to their name. Why were they so
incapable of designing and developing an oil tight, smooth running, reliable
Diesel engine?
FWIW, they had this reputation in the '70's when I worked for Rolls-Royce
cars.
Regards,
Kim Siddorn.
Peter A Forbes
wrote:
>Why were these engines so poor? Rolls-Royce were competent engineers and had
There seemed to be a line between the industrial and military engines and those
produced for the truck market, and the twain never seemed to meet up.
Without some background into the origins of the engines it would be difficult to
work out where the problems lay, but where the industrials were well-known and
had a good market, the truck engines seemed to have been a problem from the
start, and must have been a new design as they did not share any component parts
with the industrial C series.
I have some 1950's 'Engineering' magazines, one of which has an Advert for
Rolls-Royces industrial engines, I'll dig them out when I get a minute and see
where they were at the time.
Also I seem to remember that the Observer's Book of Trucks lists the Scammell
Constructor and Contractor trucks as having the C series engines, so they were
used in the automotive field initially, probably before the Eagle series came
along.
Remember also that the independent truck makers were big customers for
Rolls-Royce, Gardner, Cummins etc., but Rolls-Royce had no other outlets for
their new automotive engines, whereas the others had established markets like
gardner who were very big in the bus market.
Peter
--
Peter & Rita Forbes
Email: die...@easynet.co.uk
Web: http://www.oldengine.org/members/diesel
Andy Dingley
<kim.s...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>Why were these engines so poor?
IMHO, Rolls-Royce only ever made aero engines, but sometimes they put
them in trucks. They were good enough engines if given the levels of
maintenance that an aircraft would receive, but R-R never learned what
the different markets needed. Gratuitous complexity for piffling
advantage was just a part of it.
Peter Short
post. I came across this book recently - a history of the Rolls-Royce
'B' series engines. Pat Ware writes well, I have his books on the
Pioneer and Antar.
http://jeepworld.sonicweb.co.uk/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=14
Also found this article which gives an insight into some of this
history.
http://www.rrec.co.uk/website/public/history/Clan%20Foundry%20Belper.asp
I seem to remember that Rolls-Royce had high hopes for their oil engines
and pinned their chances on disapointments like the Vickers crawler
tractors.
There is a nice RR diesel just a mile or two from me, it is a standby
gen set for one of the radio transmitters.
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Kim Siddorn
read!
http://www.rrec.co.uk/website/public/history/Clan%20Foundry%20Belper.asp
Regards,
Kim Siddorn.
"Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out."
Cardinal Wolsey (1471-1530)
"Peter Short" <pe...@compacsort.com> wrote in message
news:6735b4dd455ec6c1538...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> Kim, not exactly what you wanted, butI thought it unusual enough to
> post. I came across this book recently - a history of the Rolls-Royce
> 'B' series engines. Pat Ware writes well, I have his books on the
> Pioneer and Antar.
>
> http://jeepworld.sonicweb.co.uk/scripts/prodView.asp?idproduct=14
>
> Also found this article which gives an insight into some of this
> history.
>
>
>
Peter Short
Name" by Peter Pugh, also in "Rolls-Royce - Hives Turbulent Barons" by
Alec Harvey-Bailey. However these two books don't go into much detail on
the various models.
What they say is that W.A. Robotham visited the US in 1947, and was
impressed with the lengths the truck manufacturers there were going to
to reduce tare weight. It occurred to him that a light alloy motor would
help, and that RR was a world leader in the use this material for
engines. He was also looking for post-war work for the Belper team.
The 'B' range of engines (petrol) had become standard issue for the
British army (full scale production beginning in 1947), so now the
decision was made to develop a 'C' range, like the 'B' range, to use a
rationalised parts sharing system for 4, 6 and 8 cylinder models. There
was initial interest for putting these engines in Euclid trucks - then
Vickers appeared with their VR180 crawler tractor which was going to
take on the D8 and beat it with its superior speed...
Vickers required a cast iron engine, so that was the end of the light
alloy design.
Interestingly, because of the Vickers order, the engines could not be
supplied to Euclid - so prompting that company to persuade Cummins to
set up in Scotland.
The 6 cylinder, 180 hp, supercharged, 12.17 litre C6 engine for the
VR180 was announced in 1951, Vickers reckoned they would need 1220
engines right off. The whole thing was a debacle (though some of these
crawlers survive in NZ, one account I have shows one hooked up to a D8
for a tug of war - "the D8 pulled its pants off'). Vickers stopped in
1958 having sold around 1500 crawlers.
Rolls-Royce had to now put a lot of work into selling these engines
elsewhere - trying to break into markets where they were unknown and not
represented. None the less, they seemed to have sold this range of
engines into many applications - Scammell being one example, and many
railway engines also.
The Oil Engine division needed to find a new site, so in 1957 they
bought Sentinel in Shrewsbury and moved there.
When RR took over Sentinel, they found an unfinished order for
locomotives, so they unwilling became involved in this market, and
somewhat to their surprise, the redesigned Sentinel with RR engine and
torque converter became the UK's best selling shunting loco.
At this time they supplied the C6, naturally aspirated engine to IHC for
their TD 20, several thousand were sold, but IHC would only pay £760 per
engine, whereas Vickers paid £1,350.
There were marine versions sold, but it seems like the generating set
application was particularly sucessful - "the most consistent sector for
the division".
The gen set market required larger outputs, hence the 'D' series
developed in the late 1950's, twice the cylinder capacity as the 'C'.
Actually, the only version developed was the DV8, 32 litre, 600 kW
output generator.
It seems like the 6 cylinder 'C' engines were built in Mexico also, the
factory later being bought by Volvo.
It also seems like the Oil Engine Division lost alot of money over these
years, production was around 2000 units per year, so by 1960 there was
drastic cost cutting, with redundancies.
In the early 1960's they had another look at the truck market - it
seemed like Gardner was underpowered for the market. They launched the
Eagle range in 1966, 205 to 300 bhp. They used US supplied rings which
improved the engines. Over the next 20 years they shared the UK market
equally with Gardner and Cummins.
With a new requirement for tank engines in 1969, the Eagle was developed
to 600 hp and a new range proposed, called the 'CV' in V8, V12 and V16
versions. This was occuring at the time that Rolls-Royce went into
receivership.
The Shah of Iran ordered 1,500 tanks with 1200 hp engines, but he was
overthrown in 1979, so that was a disaster. However, it seems that these
big engines found plenty of customers with the armed forces, for
generators and for marine use, the division was at full capacity by the
late 1970's. They began to develop a new Eagle to meet emission
standards and use less fuel.
In 1980, Rolls-Royce Motors (of whom the Oil Engine Division was a part
- that goes back to the receivership days) was sold to Vickers.
At this time the heavy truck makers in the UK were disappearing in the
face of competition, and thus this market for engines. In 1983 engine
output declined to 3,000 units per year, and so it was decided to sell
the Division to Perkins for £20 million. The Eagle range complimented
their range of engines. Perkins was then owned by Varity (formerly
Massey Ferguson).
The CV12 power packs were still being sold for the Challenger tanks (as
of 2001 when Pugh's book waas written), and apparently the C6, CV8 and
CV12 were still used for generating sets.
Not sure what the story is now, I can't imagine Perkins present owners
(Caterpillar) have need of engines for gen sets.
Prepair Ltd
wrote:
<snipped>
>Not sure what the story is now, I can't imagine Perkins present owners
>(Caterpillar) have need of engines for gen sets.
Super bit of information, Peter, many thanks.
Peter Short
Derby later in the year:
23 Nov
'The Vee Range of Rolls-Royce Oil Engines'
by Brian Leverton
Ret'd Director of Engineering
Rolls-Royce Oil Engine Division
& Roger Reece
Engineering Manager
Defence Products
Caterpillar Ltd
old...@iprimus.com.au
Kim Siddorn wrote:
> Why were these engines so poor?
>
The industrial version seems to be very reliable I have one in a
Consolidated Pneumatic Compressor bought second hand now nearly 8000
hrs. and close to 50 yrs old only the injectors and pump overhauled.
Pity I couldn't say the same about the air end.
Guy Fawkes
I don't know how they came to be so poor, perhaps design by committee,
but the fact is the basic engine designs were poor.
You can probably deduce everything you need to know about how the
designs were poor (if not why) from remembering that they developed
hylomar, for no other reason that they had to....
the whole meme of rolls royce and quality is actually a very slick
example of astute marketing, it is not a result of decades of failure
free service in a multitude of applications.
everyone who raves about the merlin has largely forgotten that the best
"merlins" were made by packard under licence and fitted to the p51 ro
replace the very able allison, which couldnt take the same boost as the
merlin for high altitude work
the p38 lighting was powered by allisons, which were far more reliable
than the merlins, original or generic, used in the p51 mustang and
others.
bear in mind in the european theatre at the time a very significant
proportion of engines never made 100 hours before being shot out of the
sky, fewer still did 1000 hours.
check out http://yarchive.net/mil/p51.html
Phil
designated "C Range". There were I4, I6 and I8 versions of just over 8
litres, 12 litres and 16 litres respectively. Production moved to
Shrewsbury after the acquisition os Sentinel. The Sentinel engines ceased
production at this time.
The Eagle automotive engines were designed at Shrewsbury derived from the C
range and were developed in Mk1, Mk2 and Mk3 forms with power outputs in the
range 160 BHP (NA for export) up to over 400 BHP mostly for the UK market.
Most were rated at 2100 rev/min although the "L" versions were rated at
1950rev/min. Hence an Eagle 220 was 220 BHP at 2100 rev/min and and Eagle
290L was 290 BHP at 1950 rev/min.
The CV8 and CV12 engines were also designed at Shrewsbury. Loosely based on
the C Range they were V8 and V12 engines of 16 and 24 litres. There was
also a CV16 planned but it was never produced.
RR also did a bigger V engine caled the DV8 (32 litres) for industrial and
marine engines and they did attempt to compete with perkins with an 8 litre
LD8 but it never made production.
The C Range and Eagle engines could be configured as "left or right hand"
(refering to the side of the engine that the Fuel Injection Pump was mounted)
build, with either wet, dry or semi-dry sumps. To achieve this the oil
galleries and some of the coolant rails were external to the engine block.
This made them expensive and complicated to build, but very adaptable for
any application. Cummins took the opposite approach and in the end won the
battle for market share.
The Eagles were fitted to most chassis in the UK and some export. Typical
customers were, ERF, Foden, Guy, Atkinson, Sisu (Finland), Denison (Ireland),
Leyland, Scammel.
The engines went out of production with the introduction of EuroIII
emissions regulations. The very last Eagles were badged Perkins (as they
all were from about 1983) and were CNG engines fitted to ERF chassis.
There are still alot of Eagles around, not least in service in the MOD in
Fodens and Scammels. The CV8 and CV12's are in service in the the MCV80
personell carrier and the Challenger Main battle tank.
Regards
Phil
Regards
Phil