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 The Rover Company Ltd discussing an experimental magnetic clutch, an electrically operated gearbox, and a hydrostatic brake system.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 127\2\ scan0127 | |
| Date | 30th January 1940 | |
| 1091 Run for filing TELEGRAMS: THE ROVER COMPANY LTD TELEPHONE Nọ ROVER.COVENTRY. 88081. NEW METEOR WORKS COVENTRY YOUR REF. Rm{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}/4.MH.{M. Huckerby} OUR REF. MCW/JM.{Mr Morley} 30th. January, 1940. W.A. Robotham Esq., Messrs. Rolls-Royce, Ltd., DERBY. Dear Robotham, In reply to your letter of January 25th. we should, of course, be glad to see you at any time to have a look at the Magnetic Clutch bits which we have made, but this is only an experimental mock-up to ascertain the general characteristics of the clutch, and has been rather considerably mutilated in the course of the experiments. In about three weeks time we expect to have a complete set which will go into one of our existing gearboxes, making top and third gears electrically operated. It might be worth your while to wait until we have this. Meanwhile, I am enclosing some drawings showing a rough outline of a 4-speed box with the top three speeds electrically operated, (we are not necessarily in favour of this type of box, but it will serve to show you the sort of layout which we propose), drawings of the clutch plate which we are now using, an arrangement drawing of the original experimental mock-up, and two sets of curves taken from experiments with this preliminary set-up. With regard to the Hydrostatic Brake System; the best we could do for you at present would be to tell you what to do to an ordinary Lockheed arrangement in order to make it a hydrostatic brake. This works, but has more drag than we anticipate getting on our own final design, so that again we would like to persuade you to wait for the proper job. In either case, if you are sufficiently interested we will, of course, tell you the entire story as far as we know it, if you would like to do some experiments of your own in parallel with ours. Many thanks for our reception the other day, and the dope on streamlining. Cont'd.{John DeLooze - Company Secretary} | ||