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Best leaking engine quote ever...

4K views 27 replies 19 participants last post by  Brewgyver 
#1 ·
From AP story about 70 year career airplane mechanic Azriel Blackman, who has no plans to retire:

"Back on the ground, he said modern jet engines are more reliable than vintage engines like the DC-3's.

"These leak oil all over the place," Blackman said. "When they're not leaking oil, it's not good. They're not running well.":laugher
 
#4 ·
lol -- back in the day, a CH-47A crew chief's main task while underway was to wander the cargo compartment, a rag or two in one hand, a roll of 100mph tape in the other, applying band-aids to leaks. We were always happy to get off the plane ;)
 
#9 ·
My Perkins 4108 has always had a "drip"....If it's a Perkins a few drips are normal came form the shop that installed it.....
 
#7 ·
Comin back the Carolina's in 2 engine turbo prop, with about 60 of us on board.
I was on the starboard wing seat. An hour in the air with drink in hand I noticed a fine yellow run down the engine cowl starting from the forward end of the engine.
I notified the steward and shortly afterwards a very young pilot sat down beside me. He looked across me and then asked what did I think. I told him that to watch to turbo / oil pressure and temps. As long as there was a streak we were good and to get me home. I was hoping that at 5k, a good glide path would get me there if he could baby it for another 45 min ;-) He did and no one but knew the reason for a number of bright red vehicles standing by as we made final approach.
 
#11 ·
old school a leak is poor workmanship always has been always will be. If it leaks I have no job or it blows up. Think about BP just a leak same bad attitude. Change it fix it or be 2nd class. Some one needs to be the 2nd but no one needs to die. Tell the dead ones on the space shuttle it was just a leak. Lets not be happy if it leaks or make a joke of it. Not wanting to sound harsh I am sure someone will look at this in a bad light. Maybe someone else might think twice fix that leak and save a life Best regards Lou 452
 
#13 ·
old school a leak is poor workmanship always has been always will be.
Or bad design. The old British bikes were notorious leakers. Generally it was caused by the fact that the crankcase was split vertically instead of horizontally - just plain stupid design work.
 
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#17 ·
Or sell it if it's old & British - that would make it unfixable as they leaked about that much from new. :)
 
#16 ·
Lou,

In the best of all possible worlds, you would be dead on correct.

However, most times we are left to do the best we can with what we're given. Many engines (why does my mind always want to add "British" to that description?) are simply known as "leakers" as many have posted earlier.

Unfortunately, fixing every leak at the first sign of seepage would lead to extensive down time for maintenance/repairs. That's OK for some things, but in many cases it gets in the way of enjoying your toy or in many military cases accomplishing the mission.
 
#23 ·
But they did!

Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 - 18 October 1871)[1] was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer.[2] Considered a "father of the computer",[3] Babbage is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.[4]

Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioning difference engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine
Might have dripped oil and vibrated though

AND
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS ( /ˈtjʊərɪŋ/ TEWR-ing; 23 June 1912 - 7 June 1954), was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, giving a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer.[1][2][3] Turing is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.[4]
Within weeks of arriving at Bletchley Park,[33] Turing had specified an electromechanical machine that could help break Enigma more effectively than the Polish bomba kryptologiczna, from which its name was derived. The bombe, with an enhancement suggested by mathematician Gordon Welchman, became one of the primary tools, and the major automated one, used to attack Enigma-enciphered messages.

Jack Good opined:

Turing's most important contribution, I think, was of part of the design of the bombe, the cryptanalytic machine. He had the idea that you could use, in effect, a theorem in logic which sounds to the untrained ear rather absurd; namely that from a contradiction, you can deduce everything.[43]

The bombe searched for possible correct settings used for an Enigma message (i.e. rotor order, rotor settings and plugboard settings), using a suitable crib: a fragment of probable plaintext. For each possible setting of the rotors (which had of the order of 1019 states, or 1022 for the four-rotor U-boat variant),[44] the bombe performed a chain of logical deductions based on the crib, implemented electrically. The bombe detected when a contradiction had occurred, and ruled out that setting, moving on to the next. Most of the possible settings would cause contradictions and be discarded, leaving only a few to be investigated in detail. The first bombe was installed on 18 March 1940.[45] More than two hundred bombes were in operation by the end of the war.[46]
AND of course The Manchester Baby
The Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), nicknamed Baby, was the world's first stored-program computer. It was built at the Victoria University of Manchester by Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill, and ran its first program on 21 June 1948.[1]
 
#24 ·
Thankfully my XJS was built in 1990 when the Ford improvements had started to kick in, so the crankshaft end seal had been changed to a proper shaft seal. Older engines had a rope end seal that leaked like a sieve. My Series III XJ with the XK engine had one, and did indeed leak like crazy. My XJS has also been fitting with newer valley pan gaskets, and new top cover gaskets so might have been the only oil-tight XJS.

Don't know what the Perkins had, but if it has rope seals you won't stop them leaking.

I have heard though that rope seals are the only thing that those snake oil leak stoppers actually work on, by swelling up the rope.
 
#26 ·
I have heard though that rope seals are the only thing that those snake oil leak stoppers actually work on, by swelling up the rope.
They also work by softening & swelling the soft plastic seals - they do work but they're not a miracle cure.
 
#25 ·
I don't know if it has rope seals but I can vouch for my '77 Westerbeke 40 (a Perkins) having leaking shaft seals. They'd been replaced twice before I got it and it has to be done again.
Not to only complain about older British stuff, we just installed a Kohler 375KW emergency generator and it appears to have a permanent small pan leak too. Short of sending it back (not very feasible) we're stuck with it.
 
#28 ·
Not to only complain about older British stuff, we just installed a Kohler 375KW emergency generator and it appears to have a permanent small pan leak too. Short of sending it back (not very feasible) we're stuck with it.
Most of the larger Kohler gensets have Volvo engines, so no blaming the Brits for that one! But I would think that a pan leak would be repairable on-site.
 
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