Olderisbetter
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- Wolverhampton
Has anyone else seen this, Is there a web page for his build?
John Dodd, very eccentric man by all accounts !there was a guy years back who did the same with spitfire engine,think it caught fire on one of its demo runs somewheres,had a rolls royce grill on it .
Fantastic! I love working on the merlins, they’re just such a gorgeous engine even to look atWhen I was attending hobby engineering at Leek college there was an elderly chap who told a story about when he was called up during WWII and put in RAF. As he had previously been working as an engineer they decided he'd become an aircraft mechanic. One part of his training was work on the Merlin and he pointed out that he'd already knew about them as he'd been building them new from scratch. RAF lecturer then told him "OK, now we will show you how to do it properly"
My late father-in-law was aircraft mechanic during the war and he gave me all his training and workshop manuals including those on the Merlin.
I seem to recall he drove it to court and was told in no uncertain terms by the judge if he was to pull that stunt again he would be jailed for contempt, so the next day he turned up on a horseI remember the John Dodd affair. I think that he did it to publicise his automatic transmission repair business. I believe that Rolls took umbrage at the use of their rad and threatened him with copyright infringement action.
The mk1 was powered by a meteor, the non charged , tank engine variant v12. The mk2 was a merlin 35 with the 2 stage blower removedIf I recall it was a Rolls chassis & John Dodd extended the chassis & bonnet by about a foot. It was thought to be an ex tank engine as it was not supercharged, running through an auto box running at twice engine speed to handle the torque (torqueflite box?)
At the time there were a series of articles in Car & Car conversions magazine about the car & the antics he got up to back & forth to the south of France
https://www.classicdriver.com/en/ar...in-engined-monstrosity-infuriated-rolls-royce
there was a guy years back who did the same with spitfire engine,think it caught fire on one of its demo runs somewheres,had a rolls royce grill on it .
I remember that car he s used to go to the drag races with it was road legal as well rr was going to sue him for calling it a roller using there radiator on itthere was a guy years back who did the same with spitfire engine,think it caught fire on one of its demo runs somewheres,had a rolls royce grill on it .