On Sat, 1 Jan 2011 14:32:32 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2011-01-01 14:24:11 -0800, Eric Stevens said:

On Thu, 23 Dec 2010 23:44:05 +0000, Grimly Curmudgeon
wrote:

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Eric Stevens
saying something like:

The British made Merlins relied
on considerable 'British Craftsmanship' to enable the less precisely
made British Merlins to be assembled.

Exactly.
All the casting faces were 'hand finished' - what a load of cock that
was, when a decent machining job avoided it entirely.

But the British-made Merlins were considerably more oil-tight than
their trans-Atlantic brethren. I don't know how much that was due to
quality of machined surfaces vs joint sealant technology.



Eric Stevens

Where did that piece of information come from?
Sounds apocryphal to me.

Royal New Zealand Airforce, which at one time operated both P-51s and
Mosquitos. I have no direct knowledge of my own.

From my days of owning a Triumph motorcycle, I do know the miraculous
properties of Rolls Royce Gasket Cement - a sticky rubbery brew
specially developed to help keep the oil inside the Merlin.



Eric Stevens