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).
Modifications to existing Phantom II hydraulic rear dampers to resolve known issues and discussing future damper development.
| Identifier | Morton\M19\ img036 | |
| Date | 4th May 1931 | |
| To R.{Sir Henry Royce} From Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer} c. to Sg.{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD} Wor.{Arthur Wormald - General Works Manager} c. to DA{Bernard Day - Chassis Design}/HDY.{William Hardy} By c. to E.{Mr Elliott - Chief Engineer} Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}7/KT.4.S.31. ORIGINAL X=35. HYDRAULIC DAMPERS. With reference to R.1/M.25.2.31. We make the following suggestions for immediate production. We have been developing the existing P.II rear dampers. The complaints in service we wanted to eliminate were - (1) Link knocks. (2) Blocked air vents. (3) Dirt on Valve Seats. We have run a damper 40 hours on the bump with the following modifications to overcome these complaints. (1) Split piston. (2) Filter for air vent. (3) End in cast iron, knife edge seats. The results show that with these three alterations we can at once make something that should cut down expense on quarterly complaints enormously. It is quite simple to fit this type of damper to the front and rear of the 25 H.P. car; if you agree we will ask Dn. to criticise a car so fitted up which we will submit to him. The position would then be that we could at once be producing 75% of the dampers we are making with all the worst known faults eliminated. It would not be necessary to make new tools. We make this suggestion, not because we do not want a completely new damper, but because we want to avoid rushing a completely new design on to the car and then finding that, though we have eliminated existing troubles, we have new difficulties and also missed some good points. For instance, we shall have to do a considerable amount of development work before we get a non-spring loaded gland right. We could not make it work six years ago. The new type horizontal damper has yet to be designed, made and tested experimentally before production is tooled up. Again we have the double piston damper designed and made and we do not want to put it on one side until we have | ||