This is Gary Spencer's very fast, well over 200 MPH, Ford V8 powered Long

EZ

direct drive. Gary enters a lot of cross country air races here in the

West.

Gary reports he is limited, due to inadequate cooling, in top speed at
air temps over about 80 degrees F. We did not discuss climb out speeds
or climb out cooling.

He is using a modern large area relatively thin radiator but
the air comes in from the bottom and the engine oil pan is partially
blocking the exit air from the rad.

Paul Lamar

Mel Lewis wrote:

Paul,
I have been looking at Gary's ford V8 installation.
There doesn't appear to be a PSRU in his configuration.
He is getting 200 MPH +?
What kind of HP is he generating?
Do you know what he has done to accomodate thrust load?
Any ideas?
-Mel-

He is doing better than that. He is turning the engine direct drive
at about 3000 to 3300 as I recall and doing about 232 MPH.

He is using the stock thrust bearings on the crank. He also does
not have a lot of hours on this second engine so it remains to be 
seen if the stock thrust bearing hold up let alone the rest of the engine :)
He did not have many hours on the first cast iron everything engine 
for that matter. His current engine is high buck everything with
forged rods, forged crank, forged pistons and after market
aluminum block. Also the aft main bearing in a V8 is not designed
to take the gyroscopic bending loads from a prop. He could lose 
the prop some day. 

Perry has had trouble with the pre 93 Mazda thrust bearings in his
direct drive installation. He spent big bucks to switch to the post
93 larger thrust bearings. Jury is still out on the life of those.

No automotive engine is designed to drive a prop directly. The thrust
bearings are designed to take the intermittent load from the clutch
throw out mechanism.

Paul Lamar
 
The AirCraft Rotary Engine NewsLetter.  Powered by Linux.
ACRE NL web site. http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            
Copyright 1998-2003 All world wide rights reserved.