Rover Gas Turbine

I remember during my time in the Royal New Zealand Navy having to hand start a Rover gas turbine fire pump. One man on either side and turn the hand for all you are worth. Very hard and slow to turn at first but once you got going you just had to keep cranking until it started. Sometimes it didn't start and you were absolutely knackered!. But once started it was a magical sound and boy would it spit water!!

Craig
 
74westy said:
I remember during my time in the Royal New Zealand Navy having to hand start a Rover gas turbine fire pump. One man on either side and turn the hand for all you are worth. Very hard and slow to turn at first but once you got going you just had to keep cranking until it started. Sometimes it didn't start and you were absolutely knackered!. But once started it was a magical sound and boy would it spit water!!

Craig

That just screams Leander class ;)
 
chrisw said:
74westy said:
I remember during my time in the Royal New Zealand Navy having to hand start a Rover gas turbine fire pump. One man on either side and turn the hand for all you are worth. Very hard and slow to turn at first but once you got going you just had to keep cranking until it started. Sometimes it didn't start and you were absolutely knackered!. But once started it was a magical sound and boy would it spit water!!

Craig

That just screams Leander class ;)

Narrow Beam Leander. HMNZS Waikato
 
"At the close of the Second World War though, Rover found themselves in an interesting position. One of their contributions to war production had been the gas turbine engines found in the first generation of British jet aircraft, and as part of their transition to peacetime production they began to investigate civilian applications for the technology. Thus the first ever gas turbine car was a Rover, the 1950 JET1. Bearing the staid and respectable styling of a 1950s bank manager’s transport rather than the space-age look you might expect of the first ever gas turbine car, it nonetheless became the first holder of the world speed record for a gas turbine powered car when in 1952 it achieved a speed of 152.691 MPH."

great article to read
 

Attachments

  • rover-gas-turbine.jpg
    rover-gas-turbine.jpg
    89.7 KB · Views: 8
There's a Rover Gas turbine at the museum internal fire near Newcastle Emlyn Internal Fire Museum » Home. They have also got an Austin Gas turbine as well which were used for fire pumps and generator sets. The two companies operations were amalgamated under British Leyland and a prototype gas turbine Truck developed.
 
There's a Rover Gas Turbine in my garage, and a lot of paperwork and manuals in my office..

Might think about selling them to make some space.
 
Back
Top