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).
'Small Car Talk' column from The Autocar magazine discussing early automotive innovations.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 61\2\ scan0212 | |
| Date | 9th November 1923 | |
| 992 THE AUTOCAR, November 9th, 1923. SMALL CAR TALK BY "RUNABOUT" WIRELESS AND THE CAR. THE owner of a 1919 model 9.5 h.p. Standard applauds the manufacturers for putting up their 12v. accumulator in a couple of 6v. sections. Since he bought the car, he has invested in a Burndept Ethophone V wireless receiver, complete with one 6v. accumulator. When this needs refreshing, he puts it in the battery box of his Standard, from which he removes in exchange one block of the car cells. He considers that country residents with wireless sets would rejoice if other manufacturers put up their car batteries in 6-volt sections. In practice, he suffers no inconvenience from the periodic insertion of a rather inert section into the box on the car. POSITIVE DRIVE FOR FANS. IN former days when I assailed designers with opprobrious epithets for fitting bootlace drives to their fans, they always told me that no rational fan would stand up at high engine revs. with a positive drive. Then the Whittle belt came to the rescue, and we enjoyed comparative peace for a season, though it naturally required occasional re-tensioning. But for the past six months I have driven a car equipped with a light fan, apparently of cast aluminium with blades 1/8in. thick, and positively driven at camshaft speed on rather a fierce engine capable of a good 4,000 r.p.m. For the first month or two I used the full engine range and the full acceleration rather timorously, half expecting to see fragments of fan emerging at speed through the radiator or bonnet. But no such calamity happened; and the joy of owning a vehicle on which all the auxiliary drives are positive is worth experiencing. TWO NEW THRILLS. THE motoring journalist tends to become a trifle blasé. Familiar with many cars of all sizes and prices, he keeps at the back of his mind an ideal and never-realised vehicle, which shall combine the acceleration of this car with the silence of a second, the suspension of a third, the brakes of a fourth, the gear change of a fifth, and so on. But my jaded tribe is genuinely enjoying really novel sensations this autumn, and amid these unwonted thrills the cushion tyre and the front-wheel brake take high precedence. To be seated in a small, light vehicle, and therein to be projectiled over visible waves and the small lakes resulting from pot-holes of real area on a wet day; to find that the car is floating, instead of jarring and pitching; to note that the speed would be considered on the high side for a newly re-surfaced highway of the first class—this may convey some notion of the difference which the new cushion tyres make. More astounding, but less necessary perhaps, are the first impressions of front-wheel brakes. The passenger is possibly unaware that the car possesses these brakes. He is dozing, with his thoughts in the near side front seat, when suddenly he feels the vehicle stop in its own length, as no good driver used to stop a car, except when a perambulator full of children had dived off the kerb right under the head lamps; as no good driver could stop any car two years ago, for there is neither swerve or sway nor judder, merely a noiseless translation of motion into rest; just the exact obverse of that delightful sensation which we know as acceleration, and obversed in terms of a G.P. racer, not of a touring car. The astounded passenger clutches the side of the body, and stares affrightedly ahead to see what helpless victim or tremendous obstacle looms ahead? There is nothing there. His sprightly driver has mischievously waked him up by a demonstration of front-wheel brakes; and the covers show no scars, for the friction has been distributed over such a large area of rubber. AIR-COOLING IN CEYLON. AT the Olympia Motor Cycle Show I met an old schoolfellow who manages one of the bigger motor businesses in Ceylon. Capt. Aston would have fallen on his neck, for he complained that many of the best British cars (in common with many other nationalities) boiled away the bulk of their cooling water in climbing some of the mountain passes in the island. This grievance inspired me to ask how our air-cooled vehicles succeeded in similar tasks; and he pronounced a frank testimonial in honour of the 8 h.p. Rover. ANOTHER VARIANT OF THE SAUSAGE TUBE. A GOOD authority recently asserted that the pneumatic tyre must just about have reached its zenith this year. At the Motor Cycle Show my attention was caught by a small stand on which the patentees of the Sorbo unburstable ball for children exhibited a new pedal cycle tyre, consisting of a normal cover, constructed with an integral filling of the Sorbo rubber sponge composition. To judge by their guarantee and what their clients told me, the idea is quite successful, so I promptly enquired whether they were doing anything with car tyres, and was as promptly shown a pair of wheels prepared for the Trojan cars. The push-bike tyre is simply stretched and sprung over the wheel, and a somewhat similar tyre with integral tube substitute is under test for small cars in general. I have already made certain tests of Canadian and American productions, in which a spongy sausage was cut into lengths and packed inside normal covers. The Sorbo application is possibly more promising, as it entails no ends working against each other. The experiment is, so to speak, still "in the egg"; but it hints at the possibility of a day when we may get good suspension without using air. F 62 | ||