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).
The use of accumulators for chassis and sphere lubrication systems.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 27\1\ Scan204 | |
| Date | 22th May 1929 guessed | |
| - 2 - The accumulator for the sphere is connected to the Bijur pump by a direct line so that the large flow, although it halves the quantity, will not upset the distribution in the rest of the system. We do not yet know whether this device will properly lubricate the sphere, but it has advantages over the collector ring scheme in being less fragile, and available for fitting on any car in a depot. We think it should take care of the sphere all right, as it is a close approximation to hand lubrication. The use of the accumulator causes a small drop in pressure so that the result will be about as follows:- Pressure in line - 90 lbs./sq.in. Pressure beyond inlet drip plug - 75 lbs/sq. in. Pressure of dis- charge from accumulator 75 lbs/sq.in. By using valveless drip plugs on the discharge, a further drop in pressure is prevented. At the same time we propose to use your long feed pipe and baffles to prevent the oil hiding away in the hollow arms of the sphere, which we feel we have delayed adopting for too long. Obviously if you consider that obtaining a sealed oil feed to the axles is difficult, it would be possible to use some form of jointed oil feed, an accumulator on the chassis end, and valveless drip plugs on the axles, so that the axles would receive measured shots of say 14 cc at stated intervals depending on the size of inlet drip plug at the accumulator. For oiling road springs with say one healthy shot at every 500 miles, the system might have advantages. This suggests however an absurdity, namely to use 7 accumulators on each chassis, one for each road spring, one for each axle, and one for the sphere. So one gets back to the idea of mounting on the dash or elsewhere one large accumulator of say 100 cc. so that if the pump is pulled every 50 miles, the accumulator will feed into the whole system every 350 miles, and give it at that time the same sort of "scouring" that it would get if it were conscientiously hand lubricated. -continued- | ||