Car's performance issues, including engine, transmission, and suspension faults.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 71\3\ scan0357 | |
| Date | 23th June 1926 | |
| COPY. Bt {Capt. J. S. Burt - Engineer} 6/PD/23/6/26. - 2 - Upon arrival in this country the car was sent to N. for attention to the following:- 1. Cure squeaky brakes. 2. Cure tappet knocks. 3. Cure exhaust blows. 4. Cure fault in the side and tail light circuit. 5. Cure poor slow running. These matters were attended to, but the car is I feel still unfit for demonstration work by reason of the following:- 1. Clutch jaggers badly. (This is dealt with periodically by W. or N., but always returns.) 2. Power poor. Performance on a hill I know well 8 miles below usual. 3. Smoke from the exhaust. 4. Tappet noise. 5. Steering slack. (New column was fitted about 6500 miles ago.) 6. A heavy clank in transmission each time the clutch is released. CWB. is testing the car and will probably make a report upon these matters. SPRINGING. It was noticeable that 'pitching' of the car was very tiresome, and any adjustment of the front shock absorbers, short of absolutely choc-a-bloc, was ineffective. To keep the shock absorbers in this condition it was necessary to tighten the adjustment at least once a day or say every 150 miles. With all shock absorbers locked pretty well as hard as we could pull them, we were able to keep going fairly well, and often passed many of the smaller French cars fitted with balloon tyres, but one felt that with much stronger front springs, or preferably a secondary springing system for the front, (even something as crude as large and very flexible buffers), we could have got along better and had a much more enjoyable drive. It will perhaps be of interest to know that whilst the back springs of this car have been twice made lighter and the front springs have been replaced with stronger ones, we found that with a load of four passengers and much luggage, we only touched the back buffers about four times, but the slightest attempt at speed on a rough road brought the front buffers down to the axle with heavy crashes repeatedly. Car unloaded weighs 49 cwt. The front springs are about 1200 lbs. and the back ones about 1775. | ||
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).