A corncob special for Jesse

[Maarten]

Hi Jesse (et all),

Found these wee clips.

Cheers,
Maarten

[jesse]

The clips were entertaining, Maarten....but I sure hated to see the R-4360 being treated that way. I'm surprised they didn't blow a couple of cylinders right off the engine the way it was backfiring. It won't be too long before it will be nothing but scrap iron.

Jesse

[Maarten]

You're absolutely right.
BTW, this is what the guy operating the R-4360 writes himself:
"The engine came to us a year ago. As we did the restoration, we ran it. Now it has a test club as you'll see in our other videos here and on the museum account. No flywheel effect - it's geared to 3:1 at the prop. Now it runs well and stays cool for the 5-10 minutes we run it."

I don't know if there are tractor pulling festivals in the States too. Here in the Netherlands they are using every thing that might be useful as a big round engine just to pull some heavy weights over a distance of about 100 yards.
Every time I see that I am horrified as those poor Merlins, Griffons, Allisons, R-2800s and R-3350s are mistreated like h...! Revving as if they are motorbike engines: from 0 - 2800 rpm in one second. Terrible.
I'm much more cautious with my virtual engines (and my real time car engine too).

Cheers,
Maarten

[capflyer]

The engine is unflightworthy already Jesse, so it's not a big loss or anything. Can't remember the whole story, but on another thread I'm on the person who donated the engine told us about it. The engine is fine though. The "backfire" you're hearing in the clips is actually just the exhaust note from the short stacks. The engines usually had long stacks that muffled the effect, but the 4630 is known for doing that, especially at low RPM. There really isn't a good way to fix it either unfortunately. I do wish they'd put a full exhaust system on it though as the "cackling" engine isn't the way I like to hear radials. I like to hear them with their full exhaust and the "proper" note that results.