"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 24 Jun 2015 08:43:27 +0700, John B.
wrote:

........................

I've always wondered about Roll Royce's reputation coming from a
country where valves had to be adjusted weekly, where SU carbs
were
invented and the amazing Lucus electrical system originated.
I remember looking at a, probably, late 1930's Rolls in a vintage
car
place in Miami and under the hood it seemed to be about as prosaic
as
my 1937 chevy. I've always wondered if that might not have been
their
secret :-)

There were several issues behind their success. Behind it all, it
was
the unmitigated stubborness of Sir Frederick Royce.

A couple of bits: The bore and stroke of the early engines was
engineered by taking the bores and strokes of the successful cars
of
the time and averaging them. d8-)

Development consisted of running an engine harder and harder until
something broke. Then, that part was beefed up, and the engine(s)
were
run again until the next part broke. And so on.

And you end up with a low RPM relatively low compression ratio, six
cylinder engine :-) Sort of like my old Chevy :-)


Sort of. Except that it isn't a Chevy. And your Chevy wasn't a
Rolls-Royce. d8-)

In those days, and even up to today, Rolls-Royce was conservative in
concept, but superlative in execution.

--
Ed Huntress

RR developed the Merlin by strengthening whatever broke too:
http://spitfiresite.com/2010/04/the-...in-engine.html
"...Rolls-Royce introduced an ambitious reliability-improvement
programme to fix the problems. This consisted of taking random engines
from the end of assembly line and running them continuously at full
power until they failed. Each was then dismantled to find out which
part had failed, and that part was redesigned to be stronger. After
two years of this programme the Merlin had matured into one of the
most reliable aero engines in the world, and could sustain eight-hour
combat missions with no problems."

-jsw