The first new 4.5-litre Blower engine to built at the Bentley factory for 90 years is being bench tested on a rig that previously held Spitfire and Hurricane engines.
The original testbeds had long gone, but Bentley did still have a unit for the Merlin V12 aero engine that was instrumental in winning the Battle of Britain. With the Blower motor held in place it can be rigged up to a modern computer-controlled dynamometer to be put through its paces.
The first test cycle lasts 20 hours to run in the engine, after which it will be fitted to the prototype Blower Bentley Continuation for a full road-test program. The car was introduced to celebrate Bentley’s centenary. Only after this ‘Car Zero’ has completed over 20,000 miles on road and track will Bentley begin production of the 12 pre-sold, £1.54 million customer cars.
The 4.5-litre engine was designed by W.O. Bentley himself, but ‘Bentley Boy’ Tim Birkin craved more power than the 132bhp W.O. was offering. Birkin got financial backing from wealthy horse and motor racing enthusiast Dorothy Paget and turned to Clive Gallop and Amherst Villiers to build a supercharger. The Roots-type blower was mounted ahead of the engine and radiator and driven directly off the crankshaft. With reinforced internals, including con-rods and crank the Blower engine added just over 100bhp.
The Blower Bentley was very quick, but never won a race in 12 outings as it kept breaking down. Bentley will, no doubt, be hoping the extensive testing of the ‘new’ version will make it rather more reliable.
Via Hagerty US
Many fond memories as a fresh from school trainee ( 85-87 ) , test beds running huge 2 stroke frigate engines to straight 6 landing craft units , never did get to see / hear the Merlin that was slowly rebuilt in the then new training facility . Great to see the Spitfire flyby in Cardiff recently , what a noise !
I have a video entitled The 4.5 L Supercharged Blower Bentley. Whilst I also have a book entitled Not Much of an Engineer the life of Sir Stanley Hooker at R R. Now when life shall I say get a little hard put on the Video turn up the Volume a read a chapter of the book and all becomes well with life.