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).
Letter from The Gates Rubber Company regarding the performance, construction, and supply of sample fan belts.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 135\1\ scan0134 | |
| Date | 4th March 1938 | |
| The GATES RUBBER COMPANY Sales Division, Inc. Denver, Colorado March 4, 1938 Rolls-Royce, Limited Derby, England Attention Mr. C. S. Steadman File 1135 P. Dear Mr. Steadman: Many thanks for your letter of February 15, but you certainly gave us a real problem to work on. I arranged for Mr. Eugene Weber, our Chief Consulting Engineer, and Mr. Custer of our Development Department to get together on this; we sat down and went into it very thoroughly. The result is that we are shipping you some sample belts that we are making up specially, but I'll tell you more about them in a few minutes. I am going to be very frank, Mr. Steadman, and say that you are expecting a lot from a fan belt in carrying such a high horsepower load. I am not even going to promise you that a Gates belt will live up to all you wish from it, but I can assure you of this--you will receive better service and longer wear from a Gates belt on this application than any other. These sample belts we are sending you may or may not do the job with complete satisfaction. But we think you will find them a distinct improvement, and with a few suggested changes that I am going to bring up in a moment, we may be able to give you a belt that will give you 100 per cent satisfaction. At any rate we are certainly glad to work with you on this, and we want you to know that you can count on our whole-hearted cooperation. Yes, I believe you will find the American type of construction on fan belts superior to the British method. As you may or may not know, we have been fairly well established in the British market for many years. In view of the stiff duty our importers have to pay, you can easily understand that we must have a good product to offer, otherwise we could not possibly hope to compete with British-made belts. Gates belts are built with two different methods of internal construction. One of these is the Multiple Cord construction of many layers of small cords layed side by side. The other is Seine-Twine construction in which | ||