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).
Ride-control settings and handling performance, comparing different minimum poundage settings for a Bentley.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 27a\1\ Scan253 | |
| Date | 9th March 1935 | |
| - 2 - Srl/Crn.9.3.35. Up to now there is very little Bentley left of the car. It simply handles like any other car - cannot be "batted" with any feeling of security, wanders badly and has terrific sharp reactions in the steering. I was very worried about this and decided to put the minimum front poundage up to 100, and the minimum rear poundage to 90. It is now an exceedingly nice car again. I have given numerous trial runs and everybody is delighted with the car which incidentally gives a very excellent performance with a real he-man's body. Needless to say we are having to set all ride-control chassis over here, as follows :- Minimum front 90 " rear 80 We have to explain to customers that we can give them a bigger range on the ride-control by setting the minimum lower and that they should get used to their cars first. I am glad to say that so far we have not met with any springing complaints with the 90 and 80 settings. What I cannot understand is that with a 75 minimum setting our car was exceedingly disagreeable, even at high speeds on a maximum setting of the ride-control. The point, however, on which I think somebody has slipped up in regard to the ride-control, is the following as applied to the Bentley :- Let us take a chassis delivered with 75 minimum, and let us put the control over to maximum and try to put up just a little performance on my particular track. The speed would vary between 60 and 80 kms per hour. At this moment the car is absolutely unmanageable. This also applies to fast cornering: when I say fast, I mean taking certain bends, as we often have to do, at 100 kms per hour. It would appear that the ride-control does not build up even on maximum sufficiently to allow for snappy handling between 60 and 110 kms per hour, unless the minimum is at least 90 front and 80 rear, and at this setting I presume that the ride-control has no effect at all at these speeds. The ideal ride-control for a car like the Bentley would be a control similar to ours but on minimum would give 65 strictly for town work, and immediately the control is put over to maximum, at whatever speed one may be running, it should give a minimum of 90 to 100 all round. Is this possible ? These two distinct settings would be of far more interest to all and sundry than the gradual building, which does not seem to function, or when it does it is at speeds when one is not liable to use the car for any other purpose ............. | ||