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).
Article from 'The Autocar' magazine titled 'In Praise of Greasing', a personal account on the joys of car maintenance.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 160\3\ scan0263 | |
| Date | 17th February 1939 | |
| February 17th, 1939. The Autocar 259 In PRAISE of GREASING A Rhapsody on a Novel Theme by PHILIP HENRY DO any other readers of The Autocar suffer from my form of lunacy? The afternoon was fine and I was free. At first I could not make up my mind whether to play golf or grease my car. This was no choice between pleasure and an unpleasant duty. It was a choice between two pleasures, and I was weighing up their merits. In the end I greased my car. Now, after a terrific bath, I feel I have had a really good afternoon. My car is a five-year-old model, to which I am much attached. As I greased her I pondered over one-shot lubrication and such devices, about which I read from time to time in The Autocar. I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want them in my car. I know I used to feel the same about synchromesh gears, and I have been converted. But I should hate to be deprived of my fortnightly afternoon of greasing. Liberty at Last! First, there is the joy of putting on my overalls and beret. It's the only time my wife allows me to wear my beret. Then the actual performance, which means that I sit or lie on the very dirty garage floor and know that for once it doesn't matter how filthy I get. Each of the twenty-five grease points is a new excitement. Each is quite unpredictable. Sometimes the oil shoots through in a most satisfactory way. Sometimes there's a small bit of grit that holds things up for a time, but an extra hard push breaks through its defences. Sometimes I'm reduced to putting a piece of cheesecloth between the nipple and the gun to prevent the grease squelching out at the sides. Sometimes one point is so tough that I leave it until last. That happened this afternoon. Eventually I had to take the nipple off and replace it with a new one from the stock I keep. It was in a particularly awkward place for screwing in; nothing, it seemed, would persuade the thread to catch. But when once it was in, the contrast between the thin unwilling ooze, which was all I could get out of it before, and the thick, solid flow I achieved with the new one, made up for all the trouble. Finally, although I know all the points by heart, I check up on the chassis plan on the garage wall. It rounds the job off. I feel like a general inspecting the map after a successful battle, his companies marked in with coloured flags. He looks to see how they have taken difficult positions. I look to see how I have beaten obstinate resistance. "It doesn't matter how filthy I get." If, after this confession, you think I'm just a lover of car tinkering, you're quite wrong. Much as I like my car, nothing will induce me to carry out the instruction book's advice about oiling the clutch. I did it for a time, but it's such a fiddling little job, and it seemed to have practically no effect beyond giving me a crick in the neck from trying to see if I had got the spout of my oilcan in the right spot. Perhaps I shall pay for this neglect in the end. I like to get results. Greasing gives good visible results. So does blowing up the tyres, with which I usually follow my greasing activity. It also gives me the pleasure of guessing how many strokes I shall have to give to increase the pressure in the tyres by four pounds. My pump is a particularly inefficient one, and four pounds usually means I have to bend and unbend myself ninety times—more, if I hurry. Cleaning the plugs I also admit on the credit side of car tinkering, but it isn't so satisfactory with my model, because they are usually so clean. Admissible also on the credit side is tightening up the body bolts and screws. On a car as old as mine it is remarkable how loose they get after a time and how much more silent the tightening makes the car's running. The only snag—and an infuriating one—is that now and then, when you give a final turn for luck, the bolt breaks. "I feel like a general inspecting the map." But these are minor pleasures compared with greasing, and they don't really give you the right to a really long hot bath before tea. Now that I have given up muddying myself on the football field, this is a function I can only reasonably claim after an afternoon with the grease-gun. And after the bath I shouldn't wonder if I demand an egg for my tea. Happy Days Seriously, afternoons of that sort are among the very happiest of my life. Even if I had a chauffeur I would still insist on doing the work myself. Sometimes when I am staying away for the week-end, my host's chauffeur catches me unawares. Well, my car has two greasings that week! It isn't just because I don't trust anyone else to do it; I wouldn't let my butler—if I had one—go and play my golf for me, though he would probably do it better than I could. Greasing is one of my simple pleasures, and I don't mean to be done out of it. Does anyone agree? A45 | ||