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).
Merits, reliability, and potential adoption or testing of the Lanchester Gear Box.
| Identifier | WestWitteringFiles\A\May1917\ Scan11 | |
| Date | 23th May 1917 | |
| To J.{Mr Johnson W.M.} from R.{Sir Henry Royce} F.R. R8/B22:5:17. Re Lanchester Gear Box. (Initialed in blue: F.R.) Regarding the Lanchester gear box, I should not consider it would be diplomatic to copy this arrangement in face of them (handwritten correction: their) having copied so much of the general appearance of our chassis and engine, even if some advantage could be gained from it. Regarding the merits of this gear box, there is, as in all epicyclic gears, a distinct advantage in the ease of changing gear and silence, but my impression is (which seems to be shared with others at the works) that the gear box as fitted to the Lanchester chassis is unreliable and heavy, and would require considerable modification before it could be considered good enough to adopt. We have one or two alternate schemes which we thought were good enough to try, but they are not quite ready at the moment owing to the pressure of other work, and we feel we must make some material change in the arrangements before we should adopt any epicyclic gear. Regarding testing a gear box on a chassis of our own, I believe we have still the Lanchester chassis at the Works. This could be put into use by fitting a suitable body, and the opinions of Mr. Platford, Mr. Hives and Mr. Haldenby could be obtained. Whenever I have seen the chassis, some part of this mechanism has been out of adjustment, causing trouble, except I think, when Mr. Platford brought it to the South of France. (Handwritten note): It would be quite a big job to make and adapt one to our chassis if only an exact copy of Lanchester (Initialed F.R.) (Stamp): RECEIVED 23 MAY 1917 (Footer text): R.R. 222 V (400 L) (2 C 229 19-2-16) © 1916 | ||