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).
Phantom Steering, discussing chassis faults found during strenuous testing and proposing a collaborative approach to identify and prioritize the most serious issues.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 67\4\ scan0110 | |
| Date | 26th May 1926 | |
| X8430 HS{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} To Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} from BJ. Copy to Wor.{Arthur Wormald - General Works Manager} Phantom Steering. BJ10/E26/5/26 Thank you for your Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}5/LG20/5/26. I quite appreciate that from time to time in producing our chassis we must find out faults later which have to be corrected, although some of them are extremely expensive to put right. I believe a part of all our difficulties in the past has arisen because we have felt inclined to forgive parts of the chassis misbehaving during the 10,000 miles test, as we felt that the test was so extremely strenuous at the very high speed on the excessively bad roads in France and that under ordinary conditions the part would have behaved itself. For instance in Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}2/LG 6/5/25 you mentioned: 'When considering steering complaints with the cars running 10,000 miles, we must take into consideration the conditions under which they are running. The roads in the vicinity of Chateauroux are in exceedingly bad repair. On reasonably smooth roads there is no complaint.' It is for this reason that in future we hope that testing the car under these strenuous conditions in parallel with another car being tested under ordinary conditions may help us to find serious faults which appear under both conditions before they are put into production. I think the suggestion you make is excellent, namely, that Sales, Works, Test Dept. and Experimental Dept. should agree from time to time which are the 6 serious features of our cars and that those particular features should receive precedence. Would you kindly send us a list of the complaints which are now receiving consideration in order that we might mutually decide which are the 6 worst and most urgent items? BJ. | ||