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, sourcing, and design issues of a chassis foot switch.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 168a\2\ img274 | |
| Date | 4th March 1937 | |
| 6139. To E/Lid.{A. J. Lidsey} o.{Mr Oldham} to Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} o.{Mr Oldham} to By.{R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} o.{Mr Oldham} to Da.{Bernard Day - Chassis Design} RM{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}/Wst.2/AP.4.3.37. RE: CHASSIS FOOT SWITCH. Replying to your 1/Lid.{A. J. Lidsey}4/HP.3.3.37, the foot switches referred to in your 3rd. paragraph to ER.Sch.998 are at present on two of our experimental chassis, i.e. 35-EX. and Wraith I, and are being tested out. We are, however, hesitating about proceeding further with this switch, as we do not wish to introduce a new switch on Production which requires new tools and new Bakelite mouldings, if a satisfactory switch capable of doing the same work can be bought out cheaper than we can manu-facture it. We are at present testing out a switch of Bosch design now being made by Messrs Lucas in this country, which satisfies the requirements for double filament bulbs and dip and switch head lamps. At the moment this switch has done 30,000 operations in the Laboratory, switching on and off 60 watt head lamp bulbs, and appears to be very satisfactory. We are in touch with Messrs Lucas regarding cost and manufacture of this switch and if this is satisfactory, we propose ordering further switches for fitting to experimental cars. We would like to point out that the reason we have to use a special foot switch is because we fuse both head lamp circuits. This necessitates having two more terminals on the switch. With regard to your last paragraph, the two failures we recently experienced on experimental cars were due in one case to the floorboards having been improperly fitted causing the plunger to distort and in the other the spring toggle mechanism was found bent. We consider that this latter fault was due to faulty design as there is no provision for maintaining any lubricant on the spring toggle roller and wheel and excessive friction caused the roller to sprag and bend its support. RM{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}/Wst. | ||