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).
Modifications and feedback on a Bentley model, focusing on silencing and differentiation from Rolls-Royce features.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 3\4\ 04-page320 | |
| Date | 6th June 1933 | |
| Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} -3- C15/C15.6.33. There are, of course, different ways of looking at this, and we can take a definite decision after we have tried the car again. Could you, when sending this car up, arrange to send up with it the bits of wire matting that were fitted to the S.U. carburetters on No.1.car when it was first tried by us? You will remember that your original unit No.1. was put into a 20/25 h.p. and Sg.{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD} tried it in France. He then concluded that we could never sell it as an R-R.{Sir Henry Royce} When it was put into the No.1. Bentley it was thought that it was sufficiently noisy still to make it not as nice as the R-R; but the air silencer has made it, for all practical purposes, as silent as the R-R, at speed, and that is the point we have to decide. We have, of course, already accepted the fact that we shall lose certain orders - the point is, shall we lose any more orders if the car is silent, or not. We would like to decide this when we try No.2 car again. Is there any half-way measure of silencing? Something that is a bit better than the metal wool and not so good as the big silencer? The details that you saw no difficulty about are as follows:- (1) Change speed lever handle too close to the dashboard. This you have already attended to on the Open car, (No.4). (2) The facia board and central panel have been criticised and Ev.{Ivan Evernden - coachwork} is attending to this point in future production. (3) Different type of milled nuts, i.e. Bentley type, to be fitted to the valve cover and tappet covers. (4) The petrol tank filler cap to have the letter 'B' on it. (5) The change-speed and brake lever grips to be of a different type. (6) The rubber covers to the pedals to have 'B' moulded in the rubber. All these last four things for camouflage to get away from R-R features. (7) For mechanical reasons, you had to go back to Dunlop | ||