Anyone on this board flown a R-4360 aircraft?

[Mason]

Just curious, anyone have any stories??

 

[Ill Mitch]

The mag check takes forever.

 

[propsarebest]

The Jugs like to blow off, and vibrate off. When you look at the jugs, they have this white adhesive strip on the fins. Without it, the fins vibrate so much, the jug will vibrate itsself right off the **CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED** case.

 

[Donsa320]

Just curious, anyone have any stories??

Flew the KC-97 (Boeing 377). Had a few precautionary shutdowns for oil consumption, nothing noteworthy. With 4 rows of 7 cylinders each and, as I recall, 8 magnetos in total for left and right... it was quite the beast. On the -97 we had geared superchargers and turbo-superchargers. The Flight Engineer earned his keep. There was no true aircycle machine either, we got pressurization from the turbo-superchargers and they were not brought on until about 7500 ft in the climb. The output air was only cooled by intercoolers and in warm weather it was hot in the airplane at low altitude.

Now the rotten Hamilton-Standard propellers we had were another story. Too many stories for this board. They caused many accidents both on the Boeing and on the early Fairchild C-119's.

On the C-119's I flew we had the Curtiss-Wright R-3350 turbo-compound engine which was a great engine compared to the Pratt and Whitney R-4360. Same horse power, 3500hp Wet. We also had the Aeroproducts propeller whch was much better than the Hamilton-Standard though it had early teething problems such as no mechanical low pitch stops. But they were modified and improved and became very reliable.

The Hamilton Standards on the Boeing were modified too, much later , by putting solid aluminum blades on in place of the hollow steel blades which helped a lot. But they had cost several aircraft losses both in the C-97/B-377 and C-119 fleets by that time.

~DC

 

[avbug]

The 4360 was one of the smoothest running radial engines out there. It was a bear to do cylinder changes on, but when it was working properly, it was wonderful operationally. It seemed to catch fire more than other large radials and they seemed less willing to go out as quickly. When there was a problem, they didn't bark like twin row radials such as the 1830 or 2600.

The 3350 was perhaps the most advanced radial ever built, but the power recovery turbines were a royal pain in the butt to work on and replace.