. Oh, and BTW- that P-51D Mustang was a General Motors product- they owned North American Aviation back in WWII.
That's not correct. GM owned Fokker USA briefly during the mid 30's. All they did was buy Fokker to sell off the assets. GM was going to lay off all the people. GM was and is the utimate cut throat, evil empire, coporate monster. The leadership of Fokker USA, namely Dutch Kindleburger, managed to buy the company and changed it to North American, and moved the company from Maryland to California.
GM did own Allison during WWII though. North American had such problems in dealing with GM and the Allison V1710 motor during that period, that years later several of the engineers refused to drive GM products. Ed Schmud once said of Caddy's with autos; "I'll be damned if I'll let some GM flunky tell me when to shift gears." He drove Mercedes from the 50's until he died. Schmud once worked out the problems of the V1710, but Allison refused to listen. GM had put pressure on Air Corps to go back to the Allison in the P51J, and the F82 Twin Mustang instead of paying RR the royalty on the Merlin, so Schmud had figured out the design flaws of the GM motor.
I love the sound of a 5 liter Ford. I wonder if when they are all built to the hilt like that some of that sound leaves. Like maybe it starts to sound less like a cobra and more like a top fuel dragster. This post does not sound very intelligent, even to me-but does anyone else know what I am saying? The 302 has a sound all to it's own. Strangely enough the 5.4 kinda mimics it's sound, IMO.
[quote=P51D Mustang]That's not correct. GM owned Fokker USA briefly during the mid 30's. All they did was buy Fokker to sell off the assets. GM was going to lay off all the people. GM was and is the utimate cut throat, evil empire, coporate monster. The leadership of Fokker USA, namely Dutch Kindleburger, managed to buy the company and changed it to North American, and moved the company from Maryland to California.
Well, not exactly. Fokker was in big trouble, as Knute Rockne was killed in a Fokker F-10, and that pretty much spelled the end for Fokker in this country. G.M. had a sizable part of Fokker, along with holdings in other aircraft manufacturers, which became North American Avaition, with G.M. holding 51%. G.M. didn't really have anything directly to do wth the design of N.A.'s products, but did lend quite a bit of management support (Ernest Breech among others). G.M. did sell off their interest in 1952 (my old man was working at N.A. then). Edgar Schmud was a German who worked for Willy Messerschmitt at one time, not surprising he favored Mercedes Benz autos.. As for the Allison V-1710, it's 'problem' was that it was designed as a turbocharged engine, and thus with no turbo and a single stage blower, was a a big disadvantage to the Merlin. The U.S. Army didn't want a 2 stage blower (like the Merlin had) on it, but did change their minds for the P-63 and P-82. The Allison was a fine low altitude engine (and worked well at high altitudes in the P-38, were it was turbocharged) and was actually more durable than the Merlin. A P-51A is actually faster than a P-51D at low altitutes. Packard built Merlins in the U.S. after Henry Ford turned down a War Department proposal to have Ford build them.
Now, back to the 5.0L- without a doubt, the sweetest sounding small block out there. I think I remember hearing that Ford did some work to Mustang 4.6's to get them to sound like 5.0L's.
The Allison had problems with blowing up regardless of altitude and usage. It had penchant for pitching rods. It also exhibited an intolerance for high boost levels regardless of the boost source; supercharging or turbocharging. I have read numerious primary source accounts that allude to these problems. In the ETO, one of the remedies reccomended was a better motor oil. Had they had Mobil 1, then maybe there had been less problems involving the cold temps at high altitude in that climate. I have found some German engineering anlysis data of the captured V1710's and how they compared to the RR Merlin, Packard Merlin, DB 600 series, and Jumo V12 motors. The Allison always recieves the most critisim and the lowest ratings.
It's funny how traditional views and convential wisdom don't exactly always square with the data from primary sources, or the best researched secondary accounts. I highly reccomend reading Wagner's excellant and well researched biography of Ed Schmud, and particulary how Schmud came to be involved with Fokker/NA when he arrived in the USA via Brasil, and the state of Fokker/NA bussiness at that time. Wagner details the views of the chief people involved during the early P51 devolpment and how it came about. GM was not involved in it, nor did NA's people need advice from GM engineering. It's also interesting to note what Wagner has to say about the Schmud's suppossed employment for Messerschmitt.
Back to the SBF. I too love the sound of the SBF. In my opinion the 86 HO with the swirl heads had the most throaty rumble of the stock SBF's. Those SBF's that have aftermarket heads come closest to that sound.
DOHC, have seen the report on Richard Holdener's 460HP N/A 302 build?
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