Ruston AO's

[Gavin Tattersall]

Has anyone out there sailed with the Ruston AO's? I knew them well from my time with Reardon Smiths (of Cardiff). I would be very interested to hear from anyone else who had experience of these less than successful engine.

[James Curry]

Never sailed with them but I believe they were a nightmare as were a lot of other engines from tha era. Stork Werkspoors, Crepelle & Mirrlees Blackstone.
Mirrlees & Ruston all ended up being incorparated within the same group, Just do not mention Paxman diesels
Sorry to divert from #1

[Doug Hardie]

I have sailed with Ruston , Allen & Mirrlees diesel engines driving generator sets. The best were Allen ,run like sewing Machines. The rest were sometimes problematic to run and in my opinion not the easiest to maintain.
Doug

[James Curry]

Some daft built in designs , I think it was Mirrlees that had the fuel spill return line in the Camshaft space. Drip drip and no need to add lub oil as the sump level was going up. Costly as you had to dump the lub oil.

[J Gowers]

I sailed with straight Rustons as generators and found them to be good reliable engines, (on Sir John Hunter sister ship to the Derbyshire)I belive they made Vee engines though that were a nightmare however I also sailed with Ruston/paxmans and they were rubbish glad we only used them in port, best inovation in my opinion was the advent of shaft generators run off the main engine gearbox, sailed with these on the Denholms GTV container ships and on a small Ro/Ro