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).
Use of Borg & Beck clutches versus in-house designed clutches for various car models.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 103\1\ scan0169 | |
| Date | 27th February 1935 | |
| COPY. To E.{Mr Elliott - Chief Engineer} From Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer} c. to Wor.{Arthur Wormald - General Works Manager} Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}2/KW.27.2.35. CAR CLUTCHES GENERAL. We send you herewith Borg & Beck's design for fitting one of their 11" clutches to the Bentley. Actually, since a 9.6" Borg & Beck is fitted to the Buick and is standing up very well to our destruction tests, we think we ought to be able to get away with an 11" on the 20/25 and Wraith. The clutch calls for the modification you have just made on the Exp. Bentley crankcase. Recently we have designed and produced four or five clutches. We cannot honestly say that in our opinion any of these have any merit over the Borg & Beck: in fact, in several cases the reverse, whilst they are more expensive to produce. This is not surprising because Borg & Beck, being specialists have a large staff in England and America whose sole concern is clutches, while we both on Design and Development cannot give the same amount of time to them. The point we want to make is that cannot we, in the future, design the standard sizes of Borg & Beck driven member and back plate assembly into our clutches. We believe that this would not only relieve us of a certain amount of design and development work, but that the clutch is one of the few points on the car where we can definitely give the customer a more satisfactory article at less cost to ourselves, and give us more time on vital parts that we cannot buy off the shelf. Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer} | ||