From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
The inconsistency of the EAC governor at reasonable road speeds and its effect on performance.
| Identifier | WestWitteringFiles\M\2Jan1925-March1925\ Scan15 | |
| Date | 1st January 1925 guessed | |
| -5- INCONSISTENCY OF GOVERNOR AT REASONABLE ROAD SPEEDS. This is due to the EAC. governor being considerably more powerful than that of the 40/50 HP. and at the same time the same operating spring being employed. The result of this is that on the EAC., if the spring provided is used, the governor commences to close the throttle at relatively low r.p.m. with the result that the cam opening the throttle works on the slow portion of its range and we get the lack of sensitiveness previously referred to. As a proof that the governor does start to close the throttle at relatively low r.p.m. with the hand control at the top of the quadrant, we find that with the governor in operation (the spring being set to allow the throttle to close), the engine will only develop 12 H.P., against the 23 H.P. which it should produce were the full 16º of hand throttle opening being employed. We have dealt elsewhere with the type of spring that we recommend to overcome this difficulty. Even had we the correct spring for this governor we should not be able to compete with the 40/50 at speeds from 30 - 40 m.p.h. for the following reason. At 35 m.p.h. 12¾ H.P. is required to drive the car on the level. With our 16º throttle opening, we can only obtain 18¾ H.P. at this speed so that the surplus H.P. available to deal with any gradient that is encountered is only 6¾ H.P. This will only enable that car to climb a hill of 1 in 70 when the spring opens the throttle to the full 16º, whereas, contd : | ||