The 'Secret' prototype.....

[PR19_Kit]

Most of the high pressure hose fittings fail and dump gallons of oil all over everywhere............... 

The multi jet high pressure hydraulic fountain sounds interesting...............from a safe distance.

I was about 70 miles away at the time, thank goodness, but the customer was only a few miles away from you Mr. Rheged.   

[Scotaidh]

Most of the high pressure hose fittings fail and dump gallons of oil all over everywhere............... 

The multi jet high pressure hydraulic fountain sounds interesting...............from a safe distance.

I was about 70 miles away at the time, thank goodness, but the customer was only a few miles away from you Mr. Rheged.   

High-pressure hydraulics are nothing to muck about with.  They can cut you in half - literally.  A friend told me that on his sub a shipyard worker stepped off a walkway onto a high-pressure 1/4" hydraulic pipe and cracked a fitting.  The SYW put his foot over the break - I guess he thought his steel-toed boots would protect him.  They didn't - the jet of oil sliced through his boot- and foot-soles quicker than you can say "Jack Robinson" and his lower leg filled (ballooned) up with oil before he felt the pain and started screaming.  He was taken away in an ambulance and lost his leg from the knee down ... Not funny at all.

High-pressure anything - air, steam, oil, water - can be chillingly dangerous.

[PR19_Kit]

Very true.

I've had a few close calls since I started with hydraulics in the mid-60s, and I've known more than one ex-colleague having been killed in such 'accidents'.

[zenrat]

I've read up on high pressure injection injuries when doing OH&S paperwork for large earthmoving machinery.  It makes for sobering reading.

[PR19_Kit]

Even if the oil itself stays away from you, the bits of a failed fitting or component can be lethal of they come detached under 3000 psi!

I had a quart accumulator come off a less than optimum compression fitting about a foot in front of me, and it shot through the roof of the clean room, further up and through the roof of the main test lab, up around 3-4 floors, and then came back down again, spewing oil from its exhaust port the whole way. Naturally I was drenched, head to toe, but un-injured thank goodness.

Mrs_PR19, who had an office on the 4th floor in the next building, phoned me immediately and asked 'Was that you'? 

[NARSES2]

Mrs_PR19, who had an office on the 4th floor in the next building, phoned me immediately and asked 'Was that you'? 

And I bet when you replied "yes" she said "typical" 

Most of the industrial nasty's in my line of work tended to involve very hot metal, which at least tended not to be very messy, nasty, yes, but almost self cleaning.

[zenrat]

Working at the sewage treatment plant on the other hand was very messy and very unpleasant to clean up.
There was one death while I was there.  A maintenance fitter disappeared one morning.  After he didn't turn up for morning tea break the alarm was raised and everyone on site started searching the place.  They found his toolbag on a walkway over a channel which contained sewage that was being treated.
As we ran the pumps out in the harvest precinct we got called in to pump out the channels concerned.  They found his body at the bottom.
It appeared he had somehow slipped between the wires of the safety fencing and fallen in.  The sewage in the channel was in the form of foam so he couldn't float or swim in it but couldn't breathe it.
It must have been a horrible way to die.

[PR19_Kit]

It doesn't bear thinking about even! 

No doubt there was an upgrade to the 'safety fencing' almost immediately?

[rickshaw]

When I was working in the ALCOA alumina refinery there were horror stories of people coming to grief in various unpleasant ways.  The one that always stuck with me was the bloke who ended up being "drenched" in Alumina crystals.  They were generally about 1100 degrees C.  He apparently was fried literally.   I hated walking through the refinery, which I had to do to change tapes on the server which was situated in the middle of it.  There were so many potential hazards.

[NARSES2]

The worst one I know of was of the guy who fell off a gantry into a hot dipped galvanising bath. Literally fell into a bath of molten zinc and climbed out. Died of shock a few minutes latter and some of the lads who witnessed it couldn't work in that part of the plant again. He was a maintenance contractor who took a shortcut 

[PR19_Kit]

Just to show I've not been totally idle while waiting for the P stage of the PSR on the Leeds to dry, here's a teaser pic of just some of the bits of the 'Secret Prototype'.



VAST amounts of the underframe have been chopped out to suit the new engine and suspension. The engine/gearbox assembly is above the underframe, with the new front suspension above that, with the new rear suspension over to the left.

All I have to do is fabricate enough new underframe to join them all together............... 

Oh yes, and make the dummy bodyshell to go over it all too. I've not even STARTED on that yet, but I have some good ideas about it. 

[Hobbes]

is that a Jaguar V12?

[PR19_Kit]

is that a Jaguar V12?

It might be................. 

[McColm]

Forgive me,  but how much bigger is the RR Merlin is engine n size to the V12 shown here?

[PR19_Kit]

A LOT! 

Maybe twice as large? A Merlin is a 27 litre engine, almost four times the capacity of the 7 litre V12 I'm using in this model, plus it has a socking great supercharger hanging on the back.



That's the wreckage of my 'Wild Thing' drag racing van, similar in size to Fred Zenrat's twin engined Chevy, and it has an Airfix 1/24 Spitfire Merlin engine in the back. It runs via an ex-boat V-drive transmission and the exhausts go out through the roof almost vertically. 

I'll re-build it one day................