Bristol Aero Engine Gear Casing Colour

Chris, I agree black was the major color in use but I do have a number of pictures of Hercules engines with light grey crankcases and reduction gear housings.  They may be museum engines.   I did do black on my Beaufighter.

I seem to remember one US engine used black for radial crankcases and gear covers- forget which one. It was not PW or Wright, but one of the smaller brands.  Also one used silver or else it was bare aluminum casting, hard to tell from pictures.  Best bet on anyone's engines is check references first!

And watch museum aircraft or engines- as John said, museum engines are always suspect.

This usually, but not always gets the modellers from the US. A few years ago, I went through all my references on British aircraft and engines, including GOOGLE. As near as I could see from pictures, sometime in the early 1930's, Bristol started painting the gear casings on motors for military aircraft a semi-gloss black. By the time of WW2, all their motor gear casings were black. With the return of peace and the building of civil aircraft, they started to use a light colour, most likely a grey. Some museum exhibits are aircraft that are either restored from a collection of discarded airframes or ones that found a peacetime use with civilian operators. Many of these have civilian engines in them, because that's all that was available and were needed to fill the space in the cowling.

Please remember: I am only talking about aero engines that were built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company.

Chris