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).
Test report on steering tube arrangements with various spring ratings and tyres.
| Identifier | WestWitteringFiles\P\2July1926-September1926\ Scan191 | |
| Date | 1st September 1926 guessed | |
| contd :- -6- VI. S.S. TUBE ARRANGEMENT WITH MICHELIN 6.2" OR DUNLOP 5.75" TYRES. (a) Std. arrangement with various spring ratings. 3000 lbs. There is no doubt that without an unpleasant amount of friction in the steering, causing lack of selectiveness and sluggish self-centering, these springs do transmit object-ionable road shocks to the wheel at high speeds, and joggles at low speeds. From an examination of the springs they appear to come choc-a-bloc before the ball reaches the end of its spring controlled travel. 1500 lbs. A very marked improvement. On 12-EX car no real complaint of lack of control can be made with reasonable damping and tyre pressures. Friction is required to prevent the steering feeling too light at speeds, and to provide for uneven tyre wear. On really bad roads, shocks are undoubtedly present to rather an objectionable extent. We tried 1/10" more spring controlled movement of the ball ends with improved results. We consider that N.sch.2067 should provide a very good compromise. (b) Experimental arrangement of S.S. tube. We tried arrangements (c) and (b) in the attached graph. Of the two (c) was preferable because it gave greater immunity from joggles at high speeds on good roads. Both gave excellent immunity from road shocks on very bad roads and shewed a definite capacity for preventing high speed wobbles building up. In this respect they were better than the standard tube. The one object-ion to them was that if the brakes were applied sharply on a corner, the steering took charge completely owing to the very low rating large movement springs preventing the driver contd :- | ||