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).
Tyre noise complaints and development on the Phantom III model.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 157\1\ scan0321 | |
| Date | 21th April 1936 | |
| To Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} from Sg.{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD} Copy to Wor.{Arthur Wormald - General Works Manager}E. re Phantom III. Tyre Noises, etc. Sg{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD}12/E21.4.36 I am in receipt of Hs.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}1/MJ.20.4.36. I have not tried 36-EX yet but am doing so this afternoon. Reading your memo. through I think that you have got rather a wrong impression of our last complaint. The whole point is that we made it clear, when we first had P.III's and complained of tyre noises, i.e. about the Show time some 5 months ago, that we could not expect P.III to be any worse for tyre noises than a P.II. This view, I think I can say, was accepted and surely must have been known to everybody years ago. We did manage, after trying various types and makes of tyres, to pass 34-EX, i.e. a car with a size and type of body similar to that on 36-EX. It was fitted with a Dunlop tyre with a chamfered edge and we are alarmed to hear at this late date that Dunlop's do not want us to use this type of tyre on the P.III. No one here, so far as I know, is sayingthat the first production cars ought to be fitted with rubber between the axle and the frame or rubbered shackles but all we are saying and shall continue to say is what I have said above, i.e. that a P.III must not be worse than a P.II. What I did say in my memo. of the 8th, Sg{Arthur F. Sidgreaves - MD}16/E8.4.36, and to which I have not had any reply, was that I could not understand why the Experimental Department had taken so long to get down to this question of testing the effect of rubber between the axle and the frame and rubbered shackles. I did not say that it ought to have been on the first production cars. Da.{Bernard Day - Chassis Design} and Gry.{Shadwell Grylls} went to America last winter (and were back before Christmas) chiefly to study this particular matter and I was amazed to see just before Easter that we had apparently only just discovered that rubbered shackles necessitated special springs. What shocked me about 36-EX was that it was so very bad, not only on sets, as you seem to think, but on other | ||