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).
Technical memorandum discussing steering system designs, ratios, and performance comparisons with a Buick.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 68\1\ scan0025 | |
| Date | 19th July 1927 guessed | |
| contd :- -2- are not really very much worse. To back this theory up we have the fact that changing over from the 1125 steering to the 720 really did not help us a great deal with regard to steering shocks. I think we should have been as well-off if we had retained the 1125 lead and altered the overall leverage mixture to that appertaining with the 720 worm and nut. At the moment we are still enamoured with the 9¼" pendulum lever. We had to fit it on the sports car in France in order to enable us to put the required friction in the steering for high speed damping and yet keep the physical effort required for shunting within a reasonable amount. I could drive the car quite comfortably at over 90 m.p.h. with one hand and this lever MMX so that it cannot be said that an overall ratio of 15 to 1 gives poor high speed control. We have a Buick car here. This car weighs 40% less than our 40/50 HP. and yet the steering ratio gives 3 full turns from full lock to full lock. They have poor high speed control because they have made their steering for all practical purposes irreversible, not because it is a low ratio. We cannot help feeling that for your conditions in America you will soon be using 2½ turns from full lock to full lock - we are standardising 2½ turns by the shorter pendulum lever almost immediately. Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/Rm.{William Robotham - Chief Engineer} | ||