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).
Mechanical device to counteract high-speed steering wobbles.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 29\1\ Scan018 | |
| Date | 1st September 1925 | |
| R.R. 453a (50 M) (D.D. 31. 12-6-25) J.H.D. EXPERIMENTAL REPORT. Expt. No. X 457 REF: Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rml/LG4. 9. 25. To R.{Sir Henry Royce} from Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer} c. to CJ. BY.{R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} c. to RG.{Mr Rowledge} E.{Mr Elliott - Chief Engineer} c. to DA.{Bernard Day - Chassis Design} BY.{R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} c. to Wor.{Arthur Wormald - General Works Manager} HIGH SPEED STEERING WOBBLES. (8U130 X457 We have recently been trying a mechanical device for putting up the criss cross period of the axle while leaving its parallel motion unaffected. This arrangement was suggested by Rg.{Mr Rowledge} It consists of a bar which passes completely across the chassis and each end of which is attached to the centre of the arm of the normal friction shock absorbers. The shock absorbers damp parallel motion in the ordinary way. Any criss cross motion of the axle is resisted by torsion of the rod, as when the two arms of the shock absorbers are not parallel, the rod must be in torsion. In the arrangement which we tried, which was necessarily very crude, the torsional rod was only 5/8" section. This we considered would be far too light, knowing the enormous amount of damping required to effect a wobble, but it was fitted as being the simplest arrangement for a preliminary test. The results confirmed our expectations as we could only detect a slight improvement and the period of the wobble was not altered by more than 2 m.p.h. The torsion rod seemed to have little affect on stopping the wobble commencing, there was, of course, little resistance to the first few degrees of relative movement of the shock absorber arms. contd :- | ||