P51D engine problems + other issues

hello,

 

The P51D seems to have had problems with its engine for many years now. Problems like:

 

1. Ware emergency power garanteeing engine failure at a random point in time regardless of how long it is used for.

 

2. The automatic operation of the oil and water radiators do not reliably keep the engine cool. In many situations the engine will overheat and seize if radiators are not manually opened.

 

3. There is no warning or indication when the engine is failing, it just instantly stops working including the propeller going from 3000RPMs to 0RPMs without any torque effects.

 

4. The drop tanks are always empty? From what I have been told maybe someone can confirm this.

 

There are other issues/like to haves but my main consern is that I have a module that is not working. I can't use WEP without engine failure, I have to manually control radiators in an automated aircraft and just generally tired of seemingly random engine failures without any indication or warning.

 

Please share if you have experienced some or all of these problems. Thanks

I have experienced point #1, though not for some time, as I've avoided WEP nearly at all costs because of it.

I have experienced point #2, and it is quite irritating!

It's actually a no from me, for point #3. Even just today, I overheated my engine (hit E accidentally, and continued to fly as if I hadn't) and had to limp the slowly dying engine back to Krymsk, barely scraping up 150MPH. Engine finally died when I cut to idle upon landing.

While I haven't experienced #4 myself, I have heard many, many people not only confirm it, but also include that the fuselage tank does not seem to fill. I haven't tested any of this out for myself, however.

P51D engine problems + other issues

 

In the two years I’ve been flying the P51 regularly (about 12 hours a week), I have experienced all of those scenarios many times. If I use WEP (extremely rare) in a fight or to escape I immediately RTB because engine seizure is coming it’s only a matter of time. I can also confirm that the drop tanks are not working. I’ve tried them in single player campaign missions several times. Switch tanks to the drop tank and the engine will stop from fuel starvation. The most frustrating part is the random engine seizures while at a cruise settings with all gauges reading in the green. There’s no warning or change to the engine just bam instant stop. A real plane that experienced an engine seizure that suddenly would nearly rip it self apart. The automatic cooling always lags behind and it always over heats in the climb. I’ve adopted opening the radiator in the climb to help with cooling. (I shouldn’t have to do that with an automatic system)! If the real P51’s Merlin engine seized as often as this modules does, it would have been scraped and never seen combat because of its unreliability.

Edited June 13, 2019 by Campbell

hello,

 

The P51D seems to have had problems with its engine for many years now. Problems like:

 

1. Ware emergency power garanteeing engine failure at a random point in time regardless of how long it is used for.

 

2. The automatic operation of the oil and water radiators do not reliably keep the engine cool. In many situations the engine will overheat and seize if radiators are not manually opened.

 

3. There is no warning or indication when the engine is failing, it just instantly stops working including the propeller going from 3000RPMs to 0RPMs without any torque effects.

 

4. The drop tanks are always empty? From what I have been told maybe someone can confirm this.

 

There are other issues/like to haves but my main consern is that I have a module that is not working. I can't use WEP without engine failure, I have to manually control radiators in an automated aircraft and just generally tired of seemingly random engine failures without any indication or warning.

 

Please share if you have experienced some or all of these problems. Thanks

 

take for example spit mkIX which is in the game you can fly it at 67"/3000 rpm all day long just need to keep temps low.

and those engines are very similar.

about point 3 not alwayes engine will give signs of failer but imidiet stop from 3000 to 0 its very unlikely and i think that sudden stop would rip engine off the fuselage mounts :P (even in worst case it should take couple seconds to make complete stop with noticable power lose just before it happen)

i know that alison v-1710 which was used in p-38 encpounter many engine seizing becouse running at high boost. but its difrent engine

Edited June 13, 2019 by grafspee

The Dora has the same sudden engine blows, nobody knows why and when ... MW50 related it seems.

Mustang engine fails on me too but very rare, maybe one out of twenty fights. I now tend to baby my warbirds and that helps a lot.

The Dora has the same sudden engine blows, nobody knows why and when ... MW50 related it seems.

Mustang engine fails on me too but very rare, maybe one out of twenty fights. I now tend to baby my warbirds and that helps a lot.

 

engine in p-51 when i fly never fails i just dont use wep same in Dora, funny thing is that engine from K-4 is absolutely king here you can take off with mw50 even whne your temps are too low and you can burn whole mw50 tank with 1 run, for bf109k4 mw50 is just continous power setting 1.8 ATA 2750 rpm never ever this engine failed on me maby once when i kept vertical climb and hang prop for too long that was only once that engien died

Edited June 13, 2019 by grafspee

WEP seems to work if you actually keep speed up and engine kool.Thing is being in a constant dive in a dogfight is not good LOL

WEP seems to work if you actually keep speed up and engine kool.Thing is being in a constant dive in a dogfight is not good LOL

 

last time when i was using wep in p-51 i was geting away from k-4 it was just streigh flight at top speed no more then 3 minutes after some time k-4 gave up but my engine seized couple miles off airfield

i was monitoring temps all the time no coolant or oil temp get hoter then ussual

w/o wep k-4 would get me becouse he alredy was marking some long range shots on me during chase

Edited June 13, 2019 by grafspee

Yeah it needs work for sure.The A8 has sparked the community alive a bit so I hope that pushes ED a little faster to get going with WW2 stuff.

Edited June 13, 2019 by wolfstriked

We keep blaming the cooling as the problem. Maybe the problem lies with the settings for seizures. That would be an easy fix and how do they know it's set right now? Make it more forgiving and I doubt anybody will complain, except the Luftwaffe.

We keep blaming the cooling as the problem. Maybe the problem lies with the settings for seizures. That would be an easy fix and how do they know it's set right now? Make it more forgiving and I doubt anybody will complain, except the Luftwaffe.

 

im not blaming cooling becouse in level fligh i dont see any problem with cooling in p-51. i dont expec that p-51 will do loops at 67" boost

i think the problem is that ED programed something in to this wep bind as soon as you press E the timer on the bomb starts ticking its liek some kind of magical trigger for me.

what is happening in side the engine model i dont know how is it setup etc... i dont know i cant say that is cooling problem in engine model.

ppl are reporting that dora's mw50 works well some time ago what happend to engine model later i dont know.

Edited June 13, 2019 by grafspee

I didn't single you out and you're not the only one posting. I see posts complaining about controlling the temps.

I didn't single you out and you're not the only one posting. I see posts complaining about controlling the temps.

 

in level flight ?? at least i dont have them :) but engien still seizing :)

Have you tried to not use WEP and see if that's the problem?

 

There's a wire blocking it that you have to break through. There's a reason for that.

I dont use WEP. Or well, I do once for a 100 - 150 flights ? Like I prefer to have engine power throughout entire flight rather than have that 67" in a combat, but then not come home. And without even touching WEP I've had numerous random failures in last three weeks. Similar issue occured to my squadron buddies.

 

Sometimes it happened in less than 10 min after take-off, sometimes after half an hour and sometimes everything went fine despite running engine at 61" for long periods.

That's why I think it might be how they setup the seizures. Maybe it needs looking at.

Odd. I actually haven't had many seizures at all, my last one maybe three months ago. And I climb like a bat out of hell, pushing 55" at 3000RPM at 175MPH or so. But I watch the engine gauge like a hawk, and typically open the oil door fully, and leave coolant in auto. Every time I either climb or get in a fight, even BnZ, I open the oil all the way, and it hasn't let me down for three months. It's a good habit to get into, in the mean time, until cooling dynamics.

We keep blaming the cooling as the problem. Maybe the problem lies with the settings for seizures. That would be an easy fix and how do they know it's set right now? Make it more forgiving and I doubt anybody will complain, except the Luftwaffe.

 

I don't think anyone will complain if aircraft performed as they expect. At the moment you can't fly the P51D or FW190 according to the flight manual because your engine will fail. Unless they fixed the FWD9 in the last patch? I don't know but I know the P51D is still broken for sure.

 

I used WEP to get away from two 109s this week. After about 3 minites of WEP (when I was thinking of throttling back) my engine died. I nromally wouldnt WEP but I thought maybe it was fixed in the last patch and not inculded in the patch notes.

Can someone confirm if it not the mixture control is available as an axis or just button-controlled? I know it's OT, but I'd appreciate it.

I don't think anyone will complain if aircraft performed as they expect. At the moment you can't fly the P51D or FW190 according to the flight manual because your engine will fail. Unless they fixed the FWD9 in the last patch? I don't know but I know the P51D is still broken for sure.

 

I used WEP to get away from two 109s this week. After about 3 minutes of WEP (when I was thinking of throttling back) my engine died. I normally wouldn't WEP but I thought maybe it was fixed in the last patch and not included in the patch notes.

 

that's exact scenario which happen to me my engine seized just exact moment i was attempting reducing MP :P i was some kind luck because my engine died something 10-20 seconds after bf-109 gave up on chase but i crash landed anyway :P

Edited June 14, 2019 by grafspee

Can someone confirm if it not the mixture control is available as an axis or just button-controlled? I know it's OT, but I'd appreciate it.

 

 

I dont see it listed on axis assign page.No axis needed anyway as its got three stages to it so its like 3 buttons.

I dont see it listed on axis assign page.No axis needed anyway as its got three stages to it so its like 3 buttons.

I've found some guys saying and showing pictures of the mixture control with four positions, idle/cut off, auto lean, auto rich, and emergency rich. We only have 3 positions in our Mustang, so I'm having a lot of questions. Thinking this might be another thing to tack on the list of issues?

IIRC the P-51 used to have the 4 previously mentioned settings, but at some point, Run/Auto-Rich/Lean-Rich or whatever were combined to the same setting. Since then it works automatically on Auto-Rich/Run.

 

Emergency-Rich is exactly that, for emergency situation (very seldom in RL) to keep the engine running at all cost.

 

Neither the Emergency-Rich setting nor the engine-damage situations are modeled in DCS.

IIRC the P-51 used to have the 4 previously mentioned settings, but at some point, Run/Auto-Rich/Lean-Rich or whatever were combined to the same setting. Since then it works automatically on Auto-Rich/Run.

 

Emergency-Rich is exactly that, for emergency situation (very seldom in RL) to keep the engine running at all cost.

 

Neither the Emergency-Rich setting nor the engine-damage situations are modeled in DCS.

 

agree auto lean/rich was merged in to run position in later models

I've found some guys saying and showing pictures of the mixture control with four positions, idle/cut off, auto lean, auto rich, and emergency rich. We only have 3 positions in our Mustang, so I'm having a lot of questions. Thinking this might be another thing to tack on the list of issues?

 

Resurrecting this thread just to clarify this.

 

There are two types of throttle quadrants IRL, "the principle difference depending upon whether the aircraft is equipped with a single or two-position carburetor. On later airplanes with single-position carburetors, the mixture control has the following settings: IDLE CUT-OFF, RUN, and EMERGENCY FULL RICH. On earlier airplanes with two-position carburetors, the mixture control positions are IDLE CUT-OFF, AUTO LEAN, and AUTO RICH." As quoted from an official P-51D pilot training manual.