Interesting Ideal

[358156 hp]

I've heard of these moulds before, but this was the first I've seen in person. I guess it's not that difficult to screw up the simplest jobs:

One thing I noticed was that the alignment pins are also reversed, at least as compared to most of my similar vintage molds. My oldest mold, a 360270 HP is a true reversed mold, with the handle screw holes running through the top of the mold downwards. The alignment pins are in the more conventional locations, only my '50s vintage (EBay taught me to hate that word!) 357446 have the pins in the same orientation.

There probably isn't a factory spec for pin location, out of all my moulds, only these two are like this, with the pins in the same block as the sprue plate.




If this sort of thing is driving me nuts, I probably need to do something else for awhile!

 

[Ian]

Same philosophy as Austin-Healey, Jeep, Lamtrac, John Deere, or MG: Make it any old way you feel like that day, as long as it isn't the way you made the same thing yesterday. If at all possible, use different brands of sub-parts for every unit of a production run. Oh, and whatever you do, don't keep build records that anyone can find and use later to figure out what you did.

 

[popper]

Come on Ian, Brits needed some cheap way to oil the roads to keep the dust down. It's just the sub/suppliers that didn't use dwgs. or forget what parts were provided. Previous Healey 100 owner and Triumph/BSA fixer.

 

[fiver]

I guess 'Monday morning' production has been an American tradition for years and years.

at least the upside down molds give us a window into their production steps.
I'd say they drilled the holes for the handle pins first.

 

[358156 hp]

My pics not very clear, but the assembly # & the Ideal info are inverted, while the mould number is correctly oriented to the sprue plate but are stamped on the top 1/2 of the mould as would be necessary when the bottom 1/2 is already taken up by the company name & address line. So somebody was awake that day.

Ahh... more satisfied import owners. I used to work for a JRT (Jaguar, Triumph, & Rover) dealership early on. We also had MG, Saab, Mercedes, Mazda and BMW. I learned to hate British cars there, and especially British car snobs. The high point of their day seemed to be when their cars made it through the day without breaking down. Most of them kept small change in the console in case they needed to make a phone call.

 

[Ian]

Mercedes: German for "overcomplicated because we can". Saab: "Let's engineer everything upside-down, backwards, and unique because all the good, sensible designs are patented". Volvo: "You must beg us for information or parts. When you grovel sufficiently, we might take your money. Or we might continue to ignore you". Jaguar: "We are the high snobs of the Universe. Our name is pure gold. Never mind that our products are produced by Ford in Mexico". I could do this all day.

 

[RBHarter]

And Bentley by Tata ........

 

[358156 hp]

And Lucas, Prince of Darkness?

I think VeeWee & BMW own 90% of the European car mfgs. The Brits cannot be trusted to build machinery, or cook a meal.

 

[John]

Why doesn't Lucas engineering build refrigerators?

They can't make them leak oil.

 

[JWFilips]

Please: I just bought a Jeep with what must be my last line of credit before I'm officially unemployed & hopefully Retired soon
It is a 2014 Patriot and I need it to last me ( probably my life)
I love it ..........Say it ain't so!

 

[Pistolero]

John, the Lucas refrigerator joke I heard was.....

Why do Brits drink warm beer?
Because Lucas makes their refrigerators.

Never forget helping a friend with his MGB in college. First, it was stumbling on acceleration, so I asked if he had
checked the oil in the carbs. He looked extremely skeptical and said, "Carbs don't have oil in them." Just knowing
that I was pulling his leg. I laughed, we walked out to the car, put some oil into the dampers of the twin SUs and
solved his problem.

I laughed out loud when I shook out the points from their box for another friend's TR-6. He said he paid extra for
the "Quick-A-Fit" points. Out of the box came about 20 parts, some metal washers, nylon washers, phenolic top
hat washer, a couple of lock washers, a couple of screws, and the points. My VW Bosch points came as an assembly,
just push the lead on, screw down one screw and gap them. The Brit's points took about 20 minutes of fiddling to
figure out how to assemble all those washers so the points weren't grounded all the time.

Never owned a Brit car but worked on many for friends, and a Triumph 500 Bonneville. Ever see an oil pump fail
by wearing out.....apparently needed more lube, at least that is what it looked like. That bike had a dry sump,
and the pressure pump failed, the scavenge pump put all the oil in the tank, and the idiot light came on, thankfully.

Brits are not really top engineers, it seems. Entirely aside from the build quality issues.

Gotta say tho.... a friend's 67 E-type in HS was one seriously beautiful and seriously fast car. My brother had one,
too, really fun to drive. World's heaviest 245 HP inline six, though.

Bill

 

[RBHarter]

The Rolls Merlin and to a lesser degree the Griffin are nothing to knock . Designed to run continuous duty at 2.5 atmospheres , 17min no damage at 3 but able to take 5 as needed until they over heat. 1700+ cid with 44-60 psi on the intake manifold . Very few ever let go . They're still on the race course but on the race course they pull upwards 7 atmospheres ,over twice the design working limit , 100+ psi . 4,000+ HP .
So what if it's such a narrow V12 that it's a staggered inline ......

Now I can't remember maybe they are only 1400 cid .... It's still huge and even the pull it from service if the throttle quadrant wire is broken order at 125 inhg is a a lot of boost .
Fish of a whole different inland sea .

I've always loved the Jags ,mostly because even a blind woman could find one in a parking lot . Knock off wire wheels leather wrapped everything except the polished wood . XJ12 , especially those with the flat rear glass .
Yeah champagne and caviar tastes on a public fountain coot jerky income , that'd my whole life .

 

[358156 hp]

Jags were fine, complicated, but fine, until they started in with electronic fuel injection. IIRC, it was also supplied by the Prince of Darkness as well, as a copy of a Bosch system. The choo-choo really went off the tracks for a number of years until that debacle got under control.

 

[Pistolero]

Yes, they got the Merlin and Griffon right, but the consensus of current folks flying Merlins is
that Packard build Merlins were the best ones. All the Mustangs had Packard built Merlins.

I do have to tip my hat to the Bristol Aircraft Engine Co, though. Their Centaurus was a
truly amazing thing. Sleeve valves that were powerful, quiet and reliable. Only overtaken
by turbines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Centaurus

But, there is little note taken of the mulitiple other RR aircraft engine designs which didn't work out.

By the end of the war everyone had recognized that if you stuck with the ~3000 RPMs needed for good
power to weight ratio, the maximum cylinder diameter that was feasible was about 5.5-6" based
on the speed of travel of a flame front, not changable. This meant for more HP, you just had to have
more cylinders. The Napier Saber and the RR Eagle were the result on the water cooled side, the R4360
Pratt on the aircooled side.

In opposition, the Pratt and Whitney R2800 was just one of many fabulously reliable radial designs
that they came up with. The only turkey I know of was the "crankshaft too far" of the R4360 "Corncob"
28 cylinders in four banks of seven. Although produced in significant numbers and fairly successful, they
couldn't entirely solve the math to get the crankshaft seventh order torsional resonances completely cancelled,
and they broke cranks too often. Fortunately, they were mostly installed on big multiengine transports, so
shutting one down on a translant wasn't too horrible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier_Sabre -
H-24 sleeve valve design. Magnificent and worked well, was produced and used in Tempest ground attack aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Eagle_(1944) -- never produced, similar layout to Sabre.

But then there were the Farey Battle and the Blackburn Roc, black marks on the ledgers to be sure.

I think they did better on aircraft than cars.

Bill

 

[RBHarter]

I talked at some length to a guy that flew an F4U out of the Bahamas in the 70s . When he stopped off in Daytona there was a guy that had all the casual demeanor of a bull driving a train through a china factory .
I guess the fellow that I knew was asking about a mechanic to see about a non-miss vibration/stutter .
This guy asks what he's flying and he tells him it's an F4U dash with this and that changed at revs by manifold pressure . The old mechanic just shakes his head and says " its that damned 3 bladed prop . Run it 200 faster or 300 slower with 5" more MP or 10" less and it'll go away . You should pick up about 15 knots above 10,000 and burn a gallon less if you go up unless it's got a short prop ."
In disbelief at the guys crass ' fly it like I tell you and you won't tear it up' attitude he walked to check the fueling and settle up . He mentioned to the gas jocky what an azz he thought the guy was , the gas jocky says " what do want from a combat veteran Marine crew chief ?"
It all worked out . He backed it off to 28 square gave up 12 knots and gained almost 3gal/hr . On his last leg he set it at 33x41 at 12,000 and was advised by Oakland Center to "check his ground speed correction" and adjust as needed . Something about 250 below 20k rule ......
You always heard about the bombers making it home with half an airplane empty tanks and 1 engine but there were plenty of fighters that gimped home in pretty bad shape after they got the fire blown out . As long as they didn't get the scavenger case or the oil tank on the Wrights and Pratts would run with multiple cylinders completely gone .

 

[Pistolero]

Yep, some folks have "been there and done that". Pays to listen.

Bill

 

[fiver]

this has to be a first.

the thread got swerved on the first reply.
I stayed on topic.
we made it from an American made mold to british cars and then to aircraft involving American mechanics
in under 10 posts.
I found out Popper had a Brit made car in his younger day's.
I stayed on topic [worth mentioning twice] ....until now.

 

[Pistolero]

Hey, thread drift isn't a bug, it's a feature.

If we didn't have so many folks here with such interesting and varied backgrounds,
this would be a whole lot more boring site. A lot of times I just love reading the
amazingly interesting commentary from folks here.

And we have physical proof that Lyman has put together some seriously out of whack
molds. Thank goodness that most of what I have of their production seems to be
pretty squared away. I have seen and owned a few that were definitely in the same
quality class as the mold that started the thread. Mine went down the road.

Bill

 

[358156 hp]

I must confess a preference to the big Pratt & Whitney R2800 myself. When I was young I wanted to be a fighter pilot, just like Bob Johnson of P-47 Thunderbolt fame. I had a few health issues that prevented this, but I did sooo want to be a fighter pilot, and was seriously upset to find that there were no piston engine fighter planes still in service in the 1970s except for the Skyraider, which was cool enough with the R3350, but by then its last war was over anyway.

 

[358156 hp]

I did a test cast with the mould, and it works fine, but because such screwups are pretty uncommon, the mould is now retired. Maybe it'll be worth something someday. I've only seen a couple of others that are marked upside-down.