The engine was developed by Ford. It was bought from ford by Allison. The first model, was without Regenerator Wheels, and consumed Approx. 42-43 gal per hour. The regen wheels were simply a brilliant idea, for that time. It was developed when the US was going into the oil embargo. Test motors were installed into 18 wheelers, and the drivers loaded the trailers to max allowable load, and drove back and forth, from east to west coast. The trucks were so powerful, that the drivers racked up the most expensive speeding tickets for 18 wheelers, ever given out. But they could never get reliability under control. So that when Ford sold it to Allison. In the 70's, the army came to Allison, and asked for a powerful turbine engine for its new Patriot project. Allison asked what is the requirement? 150 KW was the answer. The Allison rep at the factory told me that had to army asked for 300, or 350 KW, they would have given them the same engines. Reliability was the killer for this gen set. The army bought 104 engines from Allisons. Four engines were totaled in trials. The army planned on 7 battalions of Patriot. That came to a total of 96 engines needed. Four extra, to be used as spares. Thank goodness, the army had to scale back Patriot. We consumed engines at an incredible rate. The price for an engine, not the get set, just the engine was 255,000.00 You could set your watch at 1000 hours, the engine would self destruct. The problem was the darn things never had a "cheap" failure. It ran like a top, or destroyed itself. We spent, and the next time any of you complain about how expensive a complete service is, we spent about 30-35 THOUSAND, on a 500 hours service. Got to run, maybe continue later!
