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 India Tyre & Rubber Co. discussing criticisms of a non-skid tyre tread and the importance of brake adjustment.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 55\1\ Scan018 | |
| Date | 14th March 1930 | |
| COPY. INDIA TYRE & RUBBER CO. (Great Britain) LTD. INCHINNAN, Scotland. 14th Mar 1930. S.R.Chichester, Esq., The Rough Tilford, Farnham. Dear Mr. Chichester, I very much appreciate your letter of the 12th instant which I have read with great interest. I am in entire agreement with your comments. We have a lot of criticisms of the Silent Type of Non-skid Tread. One of our Distributors wrote saying that Wolseley's had informed him that they would not fit them in any circumstances because two of their best drivers had been killed through a bad skid which was directly due to the car being fitted with the Silent Type Tread Dunlops. Personally I think the accident was simply due to a mistake in judgment and I consider that far more can be accomplished by correct chassis design and accurate brake adjustment than ever can be accomplished by altering the pattern of the tread. Brake adjustment particularly is most important, and brakes cannot be accurately adjusted unless a machine is used for testing purposes. We have been carrying out a number of experiments in this direction. The one Brake Testing Machine which we installed was inspected by a number of Scottish Corporation officials who brought down a Leyland Double Decker to test. This Leyland was practically a new machine and had just had its brakes "re-adjusted". On testing it we found that the near side front had 600 units of braking efficiency, and the offside Zero, the nearside rear 450 units and the offside rear 500 units. Once the mechanic they brought down had seen the readings he was able to readjust the brakes so that they were balanced to 50 units, and the officials were so surprised at the result that | ||