Posted on 07/26/2019 8:08:48 AM PDT by Freeport
A persistent fantasy among those of us in aviation—or vintage cars, or motorcycles, or boats—is to find the pristine, never-used object of our passion stored away in a barn somewhere, just awaiting discovery and sale at a cheap price.
It does happen from time to time, although the pristine part is a stretch. Tom Reilly may own the mother of all barn finds in the Merlin engine he located for his XP82 Twin Mustang restoration that’s gathering admirers in droves here at AirVenture this week. When I was shooting this video on it, I could hardly believe the story.
The XP82 appeared at the end of World War II but saw no combat service until Korea. It wasn’t built in large volume—272 total—and it had a checkered manufacturing history. The first part of the production run—22 airplanes—had Packard Merlins, the rest were powered by the Allison V-1710-100. For the Packards, the right engine was left-hand turning, rather than the standard right turning.
Reilly said only 40 of these engines were built out of nearly 150,000 total Merlin variants manufactured. Reilly said his scouring of the planet turned up a new one in a box in a garage in Mexico City, a find so improbable as to defy belief.
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That slight thing here is the motorist who stops to ask the gate checker a question and gets a 30-second answer while the traffic piles up behind. It’s surprising how often this happens. If it’s every 10th car, the delay piles up until it’s bumper to bumper in Green Bay.
If I were King, I’d encourage the volunteers to act as strategic corporals and pull the car off to the side so cars behind could keep rolling. Maybe what they need is a small penalty box to move the car out...
(Excerpt) Read more at avweb.com ...
Traffic Jams! I prefer blackberry jam.
It’s been a great one! Wednesday night’s air show was phenomenal.
My father’s specific job in the Korean war was working on these specific planes.
My understanding, though, is that these planes have nothing more in common with a Mustang than a nascar racer has with the “street” car it is supposed to look like.
The video is really neat.
XP82 Twin Mustang Debuts at AirVenture
https://www.avweb.com/multimedia/votw/xp82-twin-mustang-debuts-at-airventure/
The story was that as single farmer, he was very comfortable doing his own repairs and deeply disappointed when Ford decided to discontinue the model. So he bought nine of them during the last year they were built and stored him in his barn which was available because he had switched from horses to machinery.
As each model wore out and could no longer be repaired over his lifetime, he stripped it down for parts and started driving the next one.
There were three left untouched in the barn when he died and we were lucky enough to get one.
What you say is true. I think they have fewer than a dozen parts in common.
I wish I had done this when I bought my 2006 five speed manual Scion xB new. It is the perfect car (for me). Mine now has 220k miles on it and the only repairs it has had done is a water pump, alternator and belt replacement, a couple of brake jobs, new tires every now and again, and oil changes. And it still gets 32 mpg.
and it is a smooth and comfortable ride for four men over six foot and holds a ton of stuff.
I wish I could just replace it with a new one...
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