back to article This could still wing its way to you, if you have the dosh: One Concorde engine seeks new home

Good news, everyone! Earlier this week, it looked as though your opportunity to snap up a piece of aviation history in the form of a Concorde engine might have gone. However, if your pockets are deep enough, it appears there's still a chance you could buy your very own Olympus Turbojet. We first noted the engine was up for …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But what's the point?

    I saw this listed on eBay and thought ... that's a lot of money for something you can't use. History, yes, but really, what would you do with it? Especially as it's a particularly difficult art piece to move around.

    Something like this is WAY more interesting, and even practical:

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/175931911901

    1. Lurko

      Re: But what's the point?

      As per the listing, the hope is somebody will buy it to break it up and sell as expensive art and furniture. The smaller compressor stages are routinely made into very expensive tables (eg £1,500 for a Nimrod compressor stage to £10k for a Harrier), or circa £100 for a single blade from the low pressure stages as an arty curio. There's an online shop offering the static vanes from an Olympus for £400 a pop, so expecting half a million even for a Concorde engine might not seem unreasonable, but I guess such breakers/makers and re-sellers don't have the cash (and cash flow) to take a chance on half a mil.

      For those interested in such stuff (since if you're reading this you probably are) I'll give a shout out to the Rolls Royce Heritage Trust, who operate the Rolls Royce aero engine museum at Derby. Open to the public by prior appointment only, well worth a couple hours of your time, and there's a good chance you'll get a Heritage Trust guide who actually worked on some of the later stuff.

  2. Great Bu

    Asking for a Friend....

    How complicated do we think it would be to mount this on the roof of, for example, a 2017 Mustang ?

    Asking for a friend.....

    1. David 132 Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Asking for a Friend....

      I have a friend of a friend of a friend who swears he knew a guy who mounted a JATO rocket motor to the roof of a Chevrolet Impala, if that counts...

      1. cookieMonster Silver badge

        Re: Asking for a Friend....

        Was his name Wile E. Coyote by any chance??

      2. Screepy

        Re: Asking for a Friend....

        The Chevy impala with a jato attached is one of those great legends that doesn't seem to die.

        https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1995-04.html

      3. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

        Re: Asking for a Friend....

        I saw that - on Mythbusters. They did an episode on the JATO car myth and that car they did up actually did take off like a banshee.

    2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: Asking for a Friend....

      Please don't tailgate!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Asking for a Friend....

      Range extender for a Mustang Mach-E.

      BMW had something almost the same for the i3.

    4. harmjschoonhoven
      Mushroom

      Re: Asking for a Friend....

      Your friend should be more humble ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHEHMFbEH8I ) or more daring ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdwbp6R2qM8 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR0d6s-28MA ).

    5. fpx

      Re: Asking for a Friend....

      How long will it run at full thrust before it's sucked the Mustang's tanks dry? Or rather, to how many percent of full thrust will it be able to spin up before it runs out of gas?

      1. Lurko

        Re: Asking for a Friend....

        Widely reported to use about 32 litres a second with reheat, so about two seconds to suck a Mustang dry.

        At idle, you get perhaps 15% of maximum (non-reheat) thrust, so around 5,000 lbf, compared to 38,000 lbf at full thrust with reheat, so about 13%. Startup is normal done by spinning the turbine up from an auxiliary power source, but even then jet engines require a warm up of between 3-8 minutes before you can (wisely) get any thrust out of them. An Olympus used 1,100 kgs of fuel an hour at idle, around 1,375 litres an hour, 23 litres a minute, so you might just have reached operating temperature and that heroic 13% of max thrust as the Mustang's tank ran dry.

        1. Great Bu

          Re: Asking for a Friend....

          What a coincidence ! "About two seconds to suck a Mustang dry" is the title of my porn movie.......

  3. Snake Silver badge

    Firing it up

    It's not that easy! Having an afterburner means that the avionics are even more complex than normal on a commercial airliner turbojet, and without the full avionics package I sincerely doubt that engine will ever have a pound of fuel every put through its fuel pumps.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Firing it up

      Considering this is a V-bomber era engine, I suspect the control logic would be within an arduino's capabilities (but not the controlling devices)

  4. heyrick Silver badge

    Umm...

    How does one even end up with a Concorde engine to flog on eBay of all places?

    1. en.es

      Re: Umm...

      Geezer down the pub, said it fell off the back of a lorry right in front of him...

      1. IGotOut Silver badge

        Re: Umm...

        Wouldn't that be off the infamous Concordski now probably being run by Areoflot after running out of parts for other aircraft?

        1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

          Tupolev Tu-144

          The Tu-144 [NATO name, "Charger"] was a visually-beautiful and cool-looking aircraft which had a rushed design, a horrible end-user experience (extremely-high cabin noise levels), and bad reliability.

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Tupolev Tu-144

            Urban legend has it that the consortium realised that industrial espionage was afoot and deliberately set about ensuring that faulty information reach the Soviets - particularly relating to the wing root leading edges

            This was one of the reasons it ended up with the infamous foldup canard for low speed operations

  5. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

    Better than Repurposing into Ashtrays or Being Placed on Static Display

    ... would be someone designing and building a personal aircraft -- Mach-capable, of course -- around that single engine.

    A home-brew Starfighter?

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Flame

      Re: Better than Repurposing into Ashtrays or Being Placed on Static Display

      Get a pair and make a Pod Racer a la Star Wars? Just need the anti gravity bits and good to go!

      1. An_Old_Dog Silver badge

        Re: Better than Repurposing into Ashtrays or Being Placed on Static Display

        Lacking the anti-gravity bits, a PARWIG design might be suitable for a pod-racer.

    2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: Better than Repurposing into Ashtrays or Being Placed on Static Display

      ... would be someone designing and building a personal aircraft -- Mach-capable, of course -- around that single engine.

      Ashtrays you say? One of the fun bits in a book about Operation Black Buck, the mission to go & bomb the Argies was how to get the aircraft ready. In which vital bits of the aircraft (refuelling?) had been re-purposed because they had been taken out of service. So apparently were being used as ash trays by staff around the base. Luckily this pre-dated the workplace smoking bans, so said vital bits were still around to be recovered.

      Anyway, the obvious thing to do if you have one of these engines is to make a jet truck. From a Tesla Semi. Or perhaps the ultimate leaf blower, or JW / TVL deterrent. I guess putting it back in an aircraft would be a) more complicated b) require more paperwork and c) require rather large fuel tanks.

      Hmm.. I also liked to watch Miss Geico doing off-shore power boat racing. That only had turbines from a puny helicopter, so it needs one of these instead! Then again, aren't a lot of the turbines in modern warships derived from engines like these? Presumably without the after burners..

      1. The commentard formerly known as Mister_C Silver badge

        Re: Better than Repurposing into Ashtrays or Being Placed on Static Display

        "aren't a lot of the turbines in modern warships derived from engines like these"

        Depends on your definition of modern (I feel old typing this) - Falklands veteran HMS Invincible and her sister ships HMS Illustrious and HMS Ark Royal were powered by four RR Olympus Gas Turbines (thus 'the same as Concorde' - except for the changes for different fuel, no reheat and operating in a marine environment). Other RN ships of the '80s used other GT power plants (Spey and Tyne, IIRC).

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Better than Repurposing into Ashtrays or Being Placed on Static Display

        The helicoptor engines in question (24 of them) were stolen from the US military, who arranged to sell them to the powerboat racing fraternity and make possession official because they DIDN'T want the things back even once tracked down - their history made them usuable as aviation engines anymore

        1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: Better than Repurposing into Ashtrays or Being Placed on Static Display

          The helicoptor engines in question (24 of them) were stolen from the US military, who arranged to sell them to the powerboat racing fraternity

          That sounds quite the story! I've seen people selling surplus and refurbed turbines for making jet cars and boats. But given the theoretical availability of turbines from or for civilian helicopters, would seem easier to just use those instead. Unless for bragging rights and having 'military' turbines. Also saw a superyacht that had an option to fit a turbine along with it's diesels to give it a 'sport' mode.. At the cost of substantially increased fuel consumption!

  6. Emir Al Weeq

    Afterburner?

    Concorde was Anglo-French, surely it was fitted with reheat?

  7. DS999 Silver badge

    eBay needs an escrow auction mechanism

    So people with something like that could list as an "escrow auction" and a lawyer hired by eBay holds legal title of the item in escrow, and allows people to inspect it if they are willing to travel to where it is located. Buyers would have to actually fork over the amount of cash they are bidding to an escrow account held by that lawyer's firm.

    When a winner is declared the lawyer releases the cash of non-winning buyers held in escrow back to them, sends the cash of the winning buyer to the seller, and transfers ownership of the item to the winning bidder.

    Then there is no way for people to make fake bids and waste the seller's time in these sorts of auctions that attract publicity and always attract idiots who bid on the item having no intent of actually buying. Obviously eBay would charge a bit more than the standard auction fee to pay for the lawyer, but if I had an item like that I wanted to sell I would consider that money well spent so I didn't have to worry about people bidding who have no intention of paying.

  8. JT_3K

    My wedding ring is made from a flight-flown compression vane from one of these. I'd love one but at that price tag, it's beyond unmanageable. I note also that the vent-control was the bit that made it work and slowed the air enough to be able to be used at such speed, and that the black boxes that controlled the variable inlet were removed before the planes given for static display.

  9. NXM Silver badge

    extreme shed demo

    Here's a complete nutter with an RB211 engine on a trolley running it up to full power. Top respect to him.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z8bIXeM0RJ8

    1. alexinalnwick

      Re: extreme shed demo

      The nutter is the guy with the camera, jet engines have a habit of sucking stuff in at that end.

  10. Sceptic Tank Silver badge
    Go

    Money for nothing

    I would have thought that the payment issue would have been a solved problem by now. Like:

    (a) have an account with a reputable registered financial institution with the required funds reserved for immediate payment to the seller when the bid is closed.

    or

    (b) Up-front payment of a substantial deposit which will be forfeited unless full payment is made within a certain time.

    Conditions of sale:

    Goods shall remain the property of the seller until full payment is received.

    Funds will be disbursed to ye seller when both parties agree that the transaction was closed to their satisfaction.

    There's blockchain involved.

    How difficult is this to organise in 2023?

  11. Marty McFly Silver badge
    FAIL

    Only worth its weight in scrap metal

    If the seller could make money turning this engine in to expensive furniture, they would be doing it already. That would be significant time, effort, and money. There is a very limited market for "collectible pieces of furniture or art" made from old jet engines - regardless of their provenance.

    The seller is fishing for one of the 16 museums with Concorde's on display to pick up this engine as part of their exhibit. At some point one of them will buy it, but not at this price. I wonder what numbers they are seeing on the "Make an Offer" button.

  12. Ilmarinen

    Err - Why not get it back in the air?

    Would it not be better to reunite it with its three previous colleagues and an airframe and fly the bugger about?

    (Brag: I actually flew on G-BOAC. 'kin brilliant.)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Err - Why not get it back in the air?

      I regret never having had the opportunity to fly in any of the Concorde aircraft, though I occasionally got up close to the ones built in the UK. I worked for Rolls-Royce at Bristol, as a Project Engineer in AMD (the Advanced Manufacturing Department); we had the job of finding ways to make the bits designers came up with that couldn't actually be made by existing production techniques. The Oly 593 was still being refined so I often had an excuse to wander the Brabazon hanger where the production models were being assembled. I never flew in any but saw each one take off on its maiden flight (from Bristol to Fairford).

      They occasionally returned to Filton and, on one occasion, I was walking across the end of the runway when one took off and had clear sight into four 593 engines with afterburners on, as it climbed away. A sight, and sound, I'll never forget (although the engines were felt rather than heard)...

    2. Lurko

      Re: Err - Why not get it back in the air?

      "Would it not be better to reunite it with its three previous colleagues and an airframe and fly the bugger about?"

      Well it would from our point of view, and indeed many other historic aircraft too, but that would require Type Certification by the CAA. When BA and AF withdrew their aircraft, Airbus (as the certificate holder at the time) handed it back to the CAA, and without that certificate the aircraft can't fly.

      To keep the certificate is a lot of work, and requires makers of airframe and engines, and maintainers to keep the certificate up to date through service bulletins, updates for any mods (eg new parts as the old ones become unavailable), and to support with necessary spares. All of that's very expensive for complex jets, especially since OEM spares are rarely available, and have to be substituted and relevant supplementary certificates prepared and approved, along with all the documentation.

      Similar reason for the remaining Vulcans and Victors etc ceasing to fly, although as ex-military aircraft they don't have a TC, but need a Permit to Fly backed by airworthiness support from the makers or organisations of similar standing. There was a lot of trouble when a retired Victor briefly became airborne during a fast taxi run at Bruntingthorpe a good few years back, as it didn't have the requisite approvals. For simpler aircraft, they still require a Permit to Fly, but it's a lot easier to get and keep that for those for smaller or lower tech aircraft than for Concorde or the like.

      1. Ilmarinen

        Re: Err - Why not get it back in the air?

        Yes, was at a lecture by an ex captain some years ago. He was not kind to AF or Airbus.

        Nevertheles, we can get a P-38 out of a glacier and have her flying again after 50+ years; what could be done with Concorde?

        Bit too heavy for the BMAA. Maybe get it on an LAA permit? Or chop off bits till it's under 70kg like the jet doodle bug?

        Or just shoot some regulators (purely to encourage the others of course) ...

    3. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

      Re: Err - Why not get it back in the air?

      I am INSANELY jealous of you! I wanted to fly one since I first laid eyes on one but never could afford it. They stopped flying a few years before I was able to. Today I could afford to fly one every year on vacation, but they probably won't have another supersonic passenger plane before I pass on. Many things make me regret not being born 15-20 years earlier than I was.

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