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).
Wheel wobble testing, linking it to pivot alignment, and historical issues with post-war car steering.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 20\2\ Scan100 | |
| Date | 9th September 1920 | |
| Contd. -3- HS{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}3/LG9.9.20. so that the steering wheel was only connected to one front wheel the other wheel has been running along free with no steering connections attached to it. We find that if we have any backward lean on the pivots, the wheel which is running idle will start to wobbles; it wobbles most violently. The more we leaned the pivot back the worse the wobble was but the more vertical we got the pivot the wobbles gradually disappeared until, when the pivots were vertical as near as could be measured we found that we could not drive the car with the idle wheel because as soon as the car went forward, the wheel ducked in forward or backward and so spragged the car. With the pivots leaned back, the idle wheel was quite self-steering and until the wobble commenced, it was surprising how the idle wheel kept absolutely in track with the wheel which was being steered. One could turn a right-hand corner and the wheel would follow and straighten up. From the appearance of the idle wheel wobbling, it gave one the impression that the wheel over-corrects itself. We think the point proved by this test is that the wobble originates from the wheel itself. It will be remembered that on the first post-war cars which we delivered, we had very serious complaints from Mr. Salamanca and X CJ. with reference to unstable steering on the cars. It was first thought that this might be due to the split springs but afterwards it was proved that changing the springs made very little difference. We after that proved that Goodyear rubber non-skid clincher tyres were very bad Contd. | ||