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 to Cadillac Motor Car Co. discussing experiences with Hall's and Kelmet bearing alloys.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 170\2\ img117 | |
| Date | 10th November 1931 | |
| Expl. Dept. Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}3/MJ. November 10th.1931. M.{Mr Moon / Mr Moore} Olley Esq., Cadillac Motor Car Co., Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. My. dear Oy., I have just received your note re. Hall's bearing alloys. We did a lot of work on these and we got very good results on Single Cylinder work, especially on big ends, but we had no end of trouble with journal bearings. The Alloys seemed to grow in use. Eventually we decided we could not do both the Schneider Cup and Hall's bearing metals, so we threw over the work on these bearing alloys. Actually, on the Schneider Cup engines we used ordinary white metal. The reason we could get away with this material was due to the fact that we partly balanced the crankshaft. As an alternative we produced hardened crankshaft and obtained from U.S.A. Kelmet bearings. This combination worked very well, but as we could get away with the weight of the balance weights we naturally preferred that combination. Since then we have been working on producing Kelmet bearings of our own. You will remember many years ago we sent out some engines fitted with solid Kelmet and with the help of the R.A.E. at Farnborough, we find now that we can successfully stick Kelmet on to steel shells. Hall's Alloy we only look upon as an alternative to Kelmet, and if we can work with Kelmet, this at the moment is our line of development on bearing alloys. Hall's Alloy worked very, very well on some of the plant work on high speed grinding spindles etc., and they still continue to use it there. The best alloy had the following analysis :- | ||