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).
Frame flexibility, passenger discomfort, and the challenges of measuring springing movement.
| Identifier | WestWitteringFiles\O\2January1926-March1926\ Scan14 | |
| Date | 1st March 1926 guessed | |
| contd :- -3- In the case of your own car at Le CanadelHenry Royce's French residence, we have wondered whether some of the discomfort is due to the flexibility of the over-hung portion at the rear of the frame. The fact that we have had a frame break is proof that there must be considerable deflection taking place at the rear portion, especially when the subframe is used as on your car. It may be that even without the subframe the deflection at the back of the frame may affect the comfort. It is interesting to note that on the 40 HP. Lanchester car, they have on the rear portion of the frame an exceedingly large diameter tubular cross member. This cross member is at the rear of the centre bearing for the canti-lever springs. They retained this same feature on their 20 HP. car. The whole difficulty with the springing problem is that there is no reliable means of measuring the movement and shocks which reach the passengers. Personal impressions of springing are very unreliable for obtaining accurate data. Recently, we had a case of a certain car which CWB. quoted as a good car for springing all round, but when PN.{Mr Northey} ran the same car, he found that most of his passengers were made sick. There is no doubt that with certain people a low periodicity of springing produces sickness. They are more comfortable with the jolts caused by stiff springs. We were proposing to make a few tests with a car fixed to the bumping machine drums. On there we can control the conditions and repeat them accurately. We propose to see if we can measure any difference between contd :- | ||