English engineering . . . '54 Rolls Royce

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Buddy of mine with a machine shop has gotten a load of work, at the same time as his teardown kid has developed an aversion to work. So, the last few weekends I have been going over to the shop and working as the new teardown kid (hey, I'm getting eight bucks an hour!). Yesterday's project was a '54 Rolls six. Intake valves in the head, exhaust valves in the block, like the old Willys F-head fours and sixes. EVERY fastener in this engine has tab washers! The harmonic dampener has about forty two parts, comes apart in three sections with two rows of bolts (and all those tab washers). We struggled to figure it out, referred to the obscure drawings in what passes for a manual, got it mostly disassembled, and still couldn't get the hub of the dampener off the crank snout. I finally gave up and removed the crank from the engine with the dampener hub still attached. Much of the engine is like that; a valve seal have about eight parts! It does differ from other English engines in one respect. Most of them are a wierd combination of components which are built way too flimsy and others built way too heavy. Everything seems pretty stout on this Rolls. And it has seven main bearings as the engine gods intended; it annoys me when engines don't have all of the crank support available.

(to the cognoscenti: yes, I realize that Royce was the engineer behind the company and that Rolls was just the money-man, and that I should properly refer to the engine as a "Royce" if I'm shortening the name. But "Rolls" rolls off the tongue more easily, so that's the way I'll write it).
 
If you can get hold of Airman Evan, his Dad knows a bloke pretty familiar with older RR product.

Is it possible the Damper's reverse threaded against a shoulder, with an ACME or similar thread? Otherwise it'll be some funny key and just a tight fit...
 
A key and a tight fit, I think, but I was leery of pulling very hard on the periphery of the thing, and there was no obvious way to pull it with bolts. I'll contact Evan, and thank you much!
 
Rule Britiania
Margerine and Jam
Two Chinese Crackers
Sitick 'em up your @$$
Listen to them go
Bang Bang!


The famous military based six cylinder engine was made in 4 and 6 cylinder form as a proprietry engine for Austin Gypsys, Austins Princess derivatives called Vanden Plas 4 liters, and were made as Austin Healy castings for the illfated AH 4 Liter up untill 1968. Rolls Royce then continued making them as stationary engines after then. There are a crap load of them around, and they were made in the same plant as the old Packard derived 381 and 412 cube eights you still found untill recently. I broke one up in 1997, and sent it off for scrap (the block was split and I wanted 50 bucks!. Uncultured wild colonial swine that I am....). I remember only how easy it was to smash and break stuff on it, nothing on the balancer at all

As you are possibly aware, it harkens back to the bad old days as the first engine for the post WO Bentley's, so its been in a steady state of improvement since 1931. That's why it has no Trans-Atlantic American simplicity to it. ;)

I'll do a key search of those engines above on the net, and get back to you.
slipper.jpg
 
I think you need more than the coveralls and the spanner to work on those engines. An English acquaintance living in Canada years back was in the the airplane parts industry. He said that the RR airplane engines were a sealed unit. If a plane went down due to engine failure, they would send a crew from the factory to reinstall a new one and return with the core (complete engine) to the shop. They even went out to the Sahara to do this.
I believe the RR car engine has some of this bias, like dedicated tools and purposely obscure drawings to discourage the hoi polloi from trying to work on it. As I recall, they wanted their shop to do all the interval maintenance through at least 250,000 miles.
 
I've read some similar accounts, also been told that there are a good few other bits which are nowhere near as complicated. Some of that "enforced" procedure was probably to ensure that failure-proof repairs were carried out, by people who had all the equipment, and all the time needed.

It's good to see the motor description, and ensuing comments use the more correct adjective of "English" - as opposed to British. There is nothing Scots, Irish or Welsh about that manufacturer in Crewe. ;)

One thing I'd always love to find out, is how quiet the older cars really were at speed. I mean, there was that saying that you could only hear ticking of the clock. What an era!
 
Dean, I think that drawing is of the "Wraith" dampener; I am working on the "Bench" dampener. But I'm going to get on the contact info for sure (and Evan is contacting somebody, too). Thanks very much! I expect the hard part will be describing strange components over the phone.

Ludwig, I worked on some of those RR aero engines. Canadair built a version of the Douglas DC-4 airliner with Rolls "Merlin" 620 and 622 engines (V-12, 1640 cu. in.), selling almost all of them to Trans Canada Air Lines. Avro in England built a few "Lancastrian" and quite a few "Tudor" airliners, which were the ones used in Africa. In 1973 I was working as a crewman on an unlimited hydroplane, and the crew chief and I drove a truck back to Dayton, Ohio, where a TCA Canadair Four was being broken up (sob!), and we hauled the engines back to Seattle, still in their cowlings. We stripped all the cowls and coolers and pumps we didn't need for boatracing, and of course it all went to into the dumpster. I did pour off a couple of pails of glycol, some of which I used in my '67 El Camino that winter. In the airplane, the engines were rated for something like 1450 takeoff horsepower, at probably about 40-45 psi manifold pressure. In the boat we at least doubled the power, with manifold pressure over 120 for short periods. An engine would go about three hard racing heats before you had to tear it down. The week link was the bearings in the "fork-and-blade" rods; even though we gave them some extra side clearance, the bearing material would get pounded and extruded to either side, eventually locking the pair of rods together, at which point a rod would break and punch through the crankcase.

Addo, I wonder if some of the reason those old auto and motorcycle engines were so nice and quiet is because they had such low compression . . . ?
 
i wandered into my friend's shop and explained the problem, and he gets up, tells me to follow him, and wanders to the back of the shop and says "does the engine look like this? cause this is a '55 Rolls I6" it was then that i knew that everything would be ok

my friend gave me a couple pages out of a manual he got way back in '56 to copy an pass on
he originally pulled out one he got back in '47, then remembered the later one and grabbed that one, the earlier one was cooler, had this lil bit on the side of every page about how all info in the book was confidential and how you weren't supposed to share it with any unauthorized persons (this is why i refer to him as "my friend" instead of by his name), i think it's safe to say that Ludwig was pretty close to bullseye in his post

resend me your address and i'll send all the pages, but for now the relevant part is as follows (and yes, i know it doesn't sound very helpful)

Unlock and remove the crankshaft serrated nut, using Special Tool RH.552 (RH.552 is described as a serrated spanner)

Attach the extractor to the four pinion studs, using the original nuts, then extract the unit
Click to expand...

it looks like you're gonna have to fab something up, as the extractor it lists is also a special tool labeled as RH.560

it's not much, but i hope this helps man
 
had this lil bit on the side of every page about how all info in the book was confidential and how you weren't supposed to share it with any unauthorized persons (this is why i refer to him as "my friend" instead of by his name), i think it's safe to say that Ludwig was pretty close to bullseye in his post
Click to expand...


Hmmm. Sounds grim, Evan. Lots of esoteric information there. Make sure you lads don't end up having to take a walk at high tide with cement walking shoes if the Great RR-chitect finds out. ;)
 
X":3bde6inb said:
Make sure you lads don't end up having to take a walk at high tide with cement walking shoes if the Great RR-chitect finds out.
Click to expand...
It's worse than that:
May your inability to hold your tongue leave you without one, where it shall be buried in the sands of the sea, between low and high tides--an unholy place preventing future repentance and entrance into heaven.
Click to expand...
;)
 
I'll get another look at it tomorrow. Dean's website didn't appear to have any pertinant info, but the shop owner has some contacts to call, and meanwhile he or I may devise a puller and have another go.
 
If it was a GM product, it'd be easier. You'd just smash it with a 10 pound hammer until it comes off, and get a Kmart replacement.
 
I vaugely remembered seeing a refernce to a Rolls-Royce car in my tattered old copy of the Dyke's Repair manual so I just looked it up. There is only about 1/2 page devoted to it and is an older vehicle but it gives a few engines specs, etc. HOWEVER, at the bottom of the specs it states: "Manufacturers: Rolls-Royce of America, Inc., Sprigfield, Mass."

I didn't know there was a Rolls-Royce of America. This book appears to be mostly pre-WW2. The Rolls-Royce engine specified is a flathead.

Those old F-Heads were rather nifty engines, I have owned a couple.
Joe
 
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