Re: Ditch it already
"That's a laugh, we're talking a fifty year old engine design whose control systems were designed and built by a company that ceased to exist around a couple of decades ago and whose assets were transferred to a company which did nothing with them and which in the last couple of years has successfully been getting rid of any development and support people who would have any kind of clue what to do with something from that era."
I think its fair to say that when Rolls Royce and Bristol Siddeley were forced into a shotgun marriage, the takeover was the wrong way round. Bristol's had better engineers, better designs and better manufacturing techniques. The one new engine RR had development - the RB211 - had been misengineered so badly it eventually bankrupted them - requiring assistance from Bristol to get the engine bearings working . Wheras Bristol had developed the Pegasus, the Olympus and several others in that same time frame. Yet Rolls Royce became the "parent" company and their incompetent management gained the whip hand. Bloody Wedgewood Benn and his "strategic industrial corporations"