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).
Letter from Illsley Company discussing business issues and product problems with Cuno Company.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 149a\3\ scan0122 | |
| Date | 18th July 1934 | |
| ILLSLEY COMPANY PRECISION AUTOMOTIVE EQUIPMENT DETROIT OFFICE: WEBSTER HALL HOTEL PHONE: COLUMBIA 0100 TELEPHONE 327-119 MUSKEGON MICHIGAN Handwritten: Send copy of this to Clark of Bendix please July 18th 1934 Mr. W. A.{Mr Adams} Robotham Rolls Royce Ltd, Derby ENGLAND Dear Mr. Robotham;- Replying to your kind letter of June 25th.- We appreciate your kindness in having acquainted us with the nature of the Cuno Company's reply to Mr. Clarke, for there have been other instances similar to this of an effort to harm our business, and which we have thus far handled by merely referring to the complete success had by both General Motors and Hudson with our system. For the private information of yourself and Mr. Clarke however, it may be added that we discovered an extraordinary situation with Cuno; a money obsession which we hear is causing him to be regarded as more or less unbalanced mentally, and which in our instance meant that despite every effort on our part he was determined to try to "get by" with but one size and type of Valve for everything, so as to avoid the cost of tooling up for additional sizes. Also we were never able to get him to make even samples of the safety filler cap which the writer promised you last winter. Fortunately, no serious trouble resulted. There has never yet been a single instance reported to us of a Valve sticking and failing to open when it should. The only troubles were from Cuno's hope that he could promise his jobbers a single size valve, set at one pressure (3 to 4 lbs) which would satisfy every class of user- new cars, old cars, big cars, small cars, buses, trucks, and also for original equipment. But he found that a Valve set at a pressure low enough to not loosen rust-plugged pin holes in old and leaky radiators, was too low to prevent water loss in today's new-type high speed cars- and even more, in truck and bus applications. This is illustrated by the fact that for the V-8 Ford truck we have had to step up the setting until today we advise 9 to 10 lbs. Actually, Cuno would make a character out of Dickens. We had him in Detroit last winter on some business which meant thousands of dollars, when he suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to get his return railroad tickets and hence wanted to halt the day's program while being driven back to the city to get them. When I reminded him that he could telephone his | ||