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Now for something different, V-12's !!

WS6

Stay thirsty my friends
I've shared these with Jason and I finally got some pictures I can upload.

I've become somewhat friends with the machinist who did all my machine work. He's somewhat legendary in the crankshaft design world and is winding down his career. Now that his business is sunset-ing he picks and chooses who he'll do work for and largely based on what he finds interesting.
First is a project he started a couple years ago and is currently running in a 40' mahogany vintage racing boat.

It's a Packard V-12 vintage 1940ish. This is the same engine that powered PT boats in WWII. It's a 12 cylinder,dry sumped,super charged monster. The super charger produces around 40 psi of boost and run just about any liquid fuel.
I've forgotten all the details he told me about them but if I recall it makes around 1600HP and is about 42 liters in diplacement. It had reduntant ignitions,oiling,fuel supply etc. And wieghs in at more than a ton.

It has some features I didn't expect like roller rockers!

Packard.jpg

packard2.jpg

Packard3.jpg

packard5.jpg


Next is really cool, this took him maybe 9 months to rebuild. It's a Liberty Bomber engine converted for Marine use,also in a racing boat. This one was a WW I airplane bomber engine converted sometime in the 30's for a marine application.
It to is a V12 and the Packard clearly took some designs from the Liberty engine as they look like cousins. The Liberty was built in 1918 of course for the bomber plane but was produced long after the war for surplus use(s). It's dry sump and if you notice while the Packard wasn't wearing it's rocker arm covers at the time of the pictures the Liberty Engine had non, that's right, a total loss oiling system. Oil just coming off the valve springs and running down the block.

liberty.jpg

liberty1.jpg

liberty3.jpg

liberty2.jpg


This was converted for marine use by swapping out the intake and exhaust manifolds and a cam swap. I believe it was 1650 cubic inches and made 500-600H.P. at 2000 RPM's.

Cool huh?

..
 
Those are almost too pretty to put back in now. Thanks for sharing and the supercharger on the top one is pretty unique.
 
amazing powerplants for their time..

Particularly the Liberty engine, if you think about it that engine was in production for WWI in 1918. 1918! seriously, flight was still in it's infancy as was the internal combustion engine.An overhead valved engine.

Al told me that they were originally run with castor oil and that's why you see pictures of WWI pilots that look like racoons because of the oil that flew back from the "total loss" oiling system. He also said pilots would ingest this castor oil and get diarehhea.

FWIW, the liberty engine had a service life of only 50 hours of run time. It needed rebuilt after that.
 
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