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).
Testing of two cars with 12.5% weaker front springs for different body types.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 72\3\ scan0039 | |
| Date | 28th July 1924 | |
| To Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} from BJ. BJ7/H28.7.24. X9910 E.A.C.III: 12.5% Weaker Front Springs. In reply to your Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}6/HC25.7.24, we shall be glad to hear as soon as possible when you expect to send us the two cars fitted with 12.5% weaker front springs. We presume the springs will be exactly similar to those which will be supplied to the approximately 350 customers' 40/50-h.p. chassis which will be fitted with front wheel brakes. I presume that you are testing two distinct types - one for open cars and the other for closed cars? Can the open car springs be made suitable for closed cars by fitting extra leaves? Will the cars you are sending to London be fitted with front wheel brakes and heavy axle? I shall be leaving London early on Friday afternoon for Frinton, and could test these cars on the way to Frinton. I should also like an opportunity of testing them on Thursday evening or early on Friday morning at Gerrards Cross if possible. It will not now be necessary to make 48-PK second-hand by using it for testing springs. Please, therefore, make use of the closed demonstration 40/50 h.p. car which you have belonging to the Works, instead of 48-PK, and send 48-PK to London for sale. I doubt whether Sales officials will be able to test these cars until the 6th or 7th, as they do not arrive here until towards the end of this week, and as Conduit Street is closing from the 2nd to the 6th, it would not give any opportunity. We can, however, arrange for the test to be made immediately after the holidays, and for the car to be returned to you about the 7th. I am not sure whether the cabriolet body is new or practically new. If it is new, we do not want to make it and the chassis second-hand. It would therefore be better to take off the four wheel brakes from the chassis and sell it as an ordinary standard chassis, if we are not going to use it for tests. On the other hand, if the body has had a good deal of use and is not practically new, and if changing the brakes from the present chassis to your demonstrating landaulet would be a large matter, it may be better to leave matters as you have already arranged them, namely, to send the cabriolet with front wheel brakes, to us to try. B.J. | ||