Could that be a national trait? I read that Honda people were called in for opinions/advice by Jaguar, and found that the back end of the Jag sedan was made from something like 12 stampings . . . which the Honda guys managed to reduce to four or five for the next version of the car.Originally Posted by Frits Overmars
As for MerBenz, from the Sixties, on their cars at least, they seem to love complexity (little motorized wipers for the headlights, anyone?). I had a '71 280 SEL sedan, and was told by the local MB specialist that I had best never need to do any work on the heater, because when MB built the car, they suspended the heater from a wire and they built the car around it . . . .
Still off topic, but maybe of interest to a few: Growing up in Seattle in the 1950s-'60s, the number one sport by far, especially for the boys in my neighborhood, was Unlimited hydroplane racing. I feel bad for any gearhead who has never had the experience we had many times in those years, of watching a full field of seven boats making a clock start with the thunder of the seven V-12 fighter plane engines shaking our very soul and the sight of the fifty-foot-high, 180-foot-long roostertails behind the beautiful 30' mohagany hulls filling us with a lifelong love. The Merlin 1640 (cubic inch), Allison 1710, and occasional other WW2 era engines were set up to make two to three times their "5-minute war emergency" level of manifold pressure; you could run only two heats flat-out at 130" (on 115/145 purple av-gas with further octane enhancement and water/alky injection, and lots of nitrous) then you had to take the engine down because the bearings in the "blade-rod" ("fork and blade" paired rods on a single crank journal) had pounded out and needed replacing before they seized the rod pair together and then blew a hole in the side of the case. Of course, these were soft bearings, designed for fast break-in and for embedability in a fighter plane engine. Later, the Merlin guys discovered the "transport" bearings, for Merlin versions from such aircraft as the Avro Tudor and Canadair Four.
The Merlins eventually had more success than the Allison boats, not so much from the superiority of the engine itself but because the available Allison versions had a small, single-stage supercharger while the available Merlins (-7 and-9) had a huge 2-stage blower (it was also 2-speed, but this feature was eventually diasabled, and the racers only used "low blower"). One crew did get hold of a Daimler Benz engine, but never got it to work, IIRC because they couldn't get it to oil in the upside-down mounting in the boat. Another failed attempt involved a very rare Allison 3420 from an experimental WW2 airplane; this was two regular Allisons side by side on a common gearbox and crankcase!! Another outfit had modest success with an enormous Packard V-16 out of an air-sea rescue boat. And a few outfits eventually got their hands on some Rolls Griffons (Shackleton bomber and radar plane), which had considerably more displacement than the Merlin without being physically much larger; it was also better made and a better design.
Unlimited hydros were Seattle's citizen sport for twenty five years, and a surprising number of blue-collar guys and others did volunteer work on the many locally-based boats. Alas, the glory days are gone. In the early 1980's, the governing body of the sport failed to follow the wisdom of the Indy-car people and allowed turbine engines to take over. Most boat owners and all sponsors preferred turbines because they required so much less time to prep and maintain than the old V-12s. But THE SOUND is long-gone; the turbines are sneered at as "vacuum-cleaner motors" by old-timers. I don't even go to the races now, anymore than I would bether to walk across the street to watch electric cars/bikes/boats race. I was lucky to live when I did and see the things I did, and don't care that I won't live to see the brave new silent world that approaches.
Hint to the adventurous (and monied): About the last chance you have to hear THE SOUND (albeit not redoubled by reflection off the surface of a lake, as we heard it) is at the Reno Air Races. Every gearhead should see this event once in his life.
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