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).
Response letter to Mr. R.C. Cross regarding the claims for his Rotary Valve design.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 158\4\ scan0153 | |
| Date | 14th June 1937 | |
| 1360 Rm{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}3/R.{Sir Henry Royce} 14th June, 1937. Mr. R.C. Cross, 33, Midford Road, Combe Road, Combe Down, B A T H.{Arthur M. Hanbury - Head Complaints} Dear Sir, We thank you for your letter of the 28th May referring to a visit paid to this Factory during the Writer's absence in America, and for the blueprints attached thereto. We have considered your drawings, but certainly do not think it commercially desirable to go further with this experiment until we have been able to observe from work done that the claims for the Rotary Valve can be substantiated. We understood that you had an Austin 16 with which you were going to demonstrate the greatly improved performance which could be attributed to the Cross Rotary Valve. This is the sort of demonstration which would convince us that the device had some merits. Quite frankly, our interest in high horse powers at 4,000 R.P.M. is very small. What we are continually striving for is a combustion chamber and valve gears which give a maximum m.e.p. from 500 to 2,500 r.p.m. with the minimum detonation and the optimum degree of smoothness. We cannot conceive that the combustion chamber you indicate would be able to reach 9 : 1 compression ratio on commercially obtainable fuel over the periods considered reasonable between decarbonisations. Yours faithfully, For ROLLS-ROYCE | ||