Talk:Ford GAA engine

Improve

Please help improve this article. I'm not a wikipedia master, so any help is appreciated. Almabes (talk) 21:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you work on the first paragraph of 'Development' then? As a casual reader, it made absolutely no sense.

'Production drawings' for what? Merlin engine crankshafts? Or, the Merlin itself, but why supply drawings if a possible deal with Packard had already fallen through? And, is the Ford V8 tank engine really a simplified 'clone' of the Merlin? Eyeballing the two sets of technical specs didn't immediately suggest that to me.

Was the 'US Treasury' seizure of production drawings lawful/legal? Bearing in mind that in June 1940, the US wasn't at war, by what authority was foreign IP appropriated? What examples of American IP were reciprocally seized by the British or the French at this stage?

I do hope this isn't another over-inflation of juvenile claims about Uncle Sam kicking sand in the faces of the Europeans. Wikipedia must have several billion of those already.2A01:4B00:AE0E:6200:DC7D:D977:5E79:92BB (talk) 11:50, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Who is 'Larry Sheldrick'? Suggest a link is provided.

Sentence grammar needs attention; something like "To use in British tanks the XX engine as designed by Larry Sheldrick". It's unlikely that Mr Sheldrick was 'in British tanks' when he did his design work.2A01:4B00:AE0E:6200:DC7D:D977:5E79:92BB (talk) 11:56, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

I have removed the automobile stub reference. I think it was not write as this is military and talk associated stuff and auto stub is mainly about cars

I will be adding to this page when I find where I put the other information that I have on the GAA engine

We need some links within the article to the publications referenced at the bottom of the page. Flanker235 (talk) 03:21, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

--Rbaal (talk) 23:23, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

curent status

so word on the street is, these are a dead horse, no more viable blocks, no more rebuild kits. better enjoy what you got.Brian in denver (talk) 18:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

from V12 to V8

At some point, information about this engine going from its original V12 design to a V8 via removal of 4 cylinders was cut from the article. Perhaps the information was not properly cited, or perhaps some other reason caused it, but this is still a very critical piece of information.

The article as it now stands jumps from the history of the initial V12 aircraft design to its use in land vehicles, without mentioning this crucial change. 60^o V8 engines are fairly rare configurations, so it might be worth noting the tradeoffs involved and modifications needed to achieve this. For the time being I've at least added a small note that it was changed to a V8. Russ3Z (talk) 19:52, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

60º V8s aren't all that rare, but all the examples I can think of were cut-down V12s like this. There are also some 90º V6s, cut down from V8s. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:11, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Sure, they're not rare the to the extent of never seen (think Volvo's passenger-vehicle V8 for slim packaging, not V12-derived) but it is usually noteworthy enough to merit an explanation for why it is chosen over a traditional 90^o layout. In this case, as noted, it's a cut-down V12 chosen for expediency, but the article made no mention of it (previously did but was cut out for some reason).

It might also be nice to see some additional information on the GAC as later used in the T-29 tank, though there might not be much out there.

Finally, even though it apparently never saw actual air use, might it still be appropriate to list comparable aero-engines (such as the similar-displacement Allison and Merlin) in the "See also" section? Russ3Z (talk) 14:57, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Largest mass-produced gasoline engine?

This is a pretty odd claim, with no reference that I can see. At only 18 litres the GAA is much smaller than any of the major aero engines of the time, which of which the Merlin at 27 litres was the smallest. And the GAA family production run of 28,000 is small compared to the Merlin (215,000), V-1710 (69,000), R-2800 (215,000) etc.

Unless there is any counter-argument, I will remove this claim.

The claim seems to be that it is the largest mass-produced gasoline V8 engine, specifically, which may very well be true. Russ3Z (talk) 14:52, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Used in land vehicles. This "record" is so specific that it's obviously tailor-made for this engine, and thus meaningless. Without a source, it's nothing more than a distraction. 91.10.41.62 (talk) 02:05, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

GG Engine And Merlin

I find it odd that the original Aero V12 engine was compared to the Allison V-1710 when it was dimensionally identical to the Rolls-Royce Merlin (V-1650) engine. From what I have read of the writings of Maurice Olley, a employee of Rolls-Royce at the time the engine was an attempt by Ford to build a better engine than the Merlin. After Ford was given a contract to build the engine and provided the blueprints, "A engine design appears and is built in extremely short time and on dynamometer. It is dimensionally the Merlin, but built without a single Merlin detail."

Two prototype engines were built and rejected by the government. At that point Ford said they were not going to build the Merlin but they wanted to build "the" engine. I expect this was their engine they wanted to replace the Merlin with. This engine later became the GAA tank engine.Corumplex (talk) 20:14, 31 October 2020 (UTC)