DIFFICULTIES WITH THE FIRST DESIGNS.
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Why We Were Handicapped for Many Years. Three Stages of Designing Effort. Difficulties in Obtaining Materials. The Final Triumph.
By C. M. Linley, the Designer of the Early Commer Cars.
rpHE lOt of a would-be designer of commercial motors in the early days of the industry in this country was neither a happy nor an easy one. Considerable expenditure was required for the necessary experiMental work, but the money was not easily found.. Unfortunately for the industry, the Operations of certain financiers—who were eventually laid by the heels —had so thoroughly sickened investors in this branch of the motor business that little support was to he found, excepting from those few who had the foresight to belieste in a great future for the road transport industry and possessed the courage of their convic tions. . •
Efforts were made by the few courageous pioneers to find engineers in this country who were capable of undertaking the work of designing commercial motors.
Locomotive and marine engineers were pressed into the service, but, strange asit may appear to' some, these men scarcely proved to be of the right type to adapt themselves to the requirements of an entirely new industry. • In all probability they were not elastic enough—their -ideas being too firmly rooted through their
long association with branches of engineering:where changes occur but
slowly. • Men with -a more varied experience of all sorts of engineering work, and " especially with some knowledge ' of the cycle trade, adapted themSelves more readily to the new conditions.
Conservatism was then the great obstacle to progress—even now it is to be found • in many quarters, although not so strongly developed as in those early days. At that time
we in this country had not seen much. in the way of mechanical engineering work that had come from the Continent which impressed us .
favourably, so we were inclined to underrate the efforts that had been made by Continental engineers, and were reluctant to copy their methods. So we struck out on lines of our own, and usually found that we were wrong. In America the situation was even worse, as the American prefers to go his own way, entirely ignoring the success that Europe may have achieved, until he is sometimes 'forced by great losses and complete failure to fall in line with what lie thinks a worn-out and decadent old world. •
The early. American vehicles with single cylinders and enormous flywheels had to go, and Europe had to
be copied, no matter how reluctantly that copying was undertaken. Eventually we got over the ideas that Frenchmen could do nothing besides. preparing frogs for food, that Italians could do little but sell ice cream and grind organs, and that Germans could make sausages only. • At the commencement we found that our idiotic law, which gave the foreigner some 20 years' start of us, was a severe handicap, so We set to work to copy the already well-tried methods of the Continental motor engineers. The first step was to become well acquainted with the methods of construction adopted by them and to select the best of these. It is true that nearly all the cars running here at that time were of Continental
make, but to obtain intimate knowledge of all their details was no easy task. We had not only to become familiar with their methods, -but to select from privatecar practice those details which gave the best results. and stood up best to the long and severe work required in the case of the commercial vehicle. It is one thing to see a certain device embodied in a design and say, "I will copy that," but it is necessary, if success be aimed at, to be sure that the device in question is not giving trouble. One of the best methods of acquiring -Such knowledge at that time was to start a general motor repair shop, taking all sorts and conditions of cars, and making careful not of the parts which had failed. After an extended experience of such work one could say, on seeing a--certain make of car come in, " Sprocket-shaft couplings gone again?" Or " Cams loose on camshaft? " as all cars then had certain well-defined weak spots, many had good points, whilst others had nothing but bad features.
In the writer's opinion the design of commercial motors is still largely to be learnt in the repair shop, as some of the most carefully thought-out details, which may seem perfect on the drawing board, will develop defects whea •put to the test of actual commercial usage.
It may be said that a firm can make prolonged tests of a device before embodying it in a design, but the tests made by engineers are of little value, as at the back of their minds they are always inclined to -treat the new departure with kindness; nothing but the brutal treatment of a low-grade lorry driver will prove its resistance to rough usage and neglect, without which resistance nothing is of use on a commercial motor.
In the early days one had very little to copy but the points in the design of private ears, and even the selection of the best of these did not ensure success, as we know to-day that certain details that prove satisfactory on private cars are not at all suitable for commercial work, so, although a certain amount could be learnt by copying, some original designing was necessary. .. Some of this designing was undoubtedly good, but, taken as a whole and considering that we had previously deemed ourselves the leading engineers of the world, in the writer's opinion we cut but a poor figure when, in the early days, we departed from the Continental engineer's design.
Some utterly atrocious designs were perpetrated here long after more accurate knowledge was fairly common. ci5
Some of these disgraces to our country emanated from firms with engineering reputations, and hanging seemed the only punishment that would fit the crime of the " designer " of such things. In one case the writer can remember being run away with on a vehicle in which the whole of the braking system relied on a key, simply driven home, with nothing to secure it : naturally this worked along the shaft and fell out. A long and steep hill was ahead, with a vehicle going in the same direction and a sharp turn to the left at the bottom, so there was no alternative but to take the turn abreast of the other vehicle and on the right-hand side of the road. Fortunately, there was nothing coming in the opposite direction, or this woulti probably never have been written. Incidentally, this car was the product of a firm of English engineers.
In another case the product of an English engineering firm was a car.in which the engine was placed as high 'as possible in a vehicle with exceptionally large wheels and high body, the idea of the " designer " being, apparently, to raise the centre of gravity to the highest possible point. Such unpardonable errors as these and many others that the writer came across did not impress the buying public with confidence in British products.
As time went on, however, the incompetent engineers were gradually weeded out, and Englishmen began to recognize that the start afforded the Continental designers had helped them to get down to the job, so a wholesale copying began—a copying that was often blind and included the bad as well as the good points of the Continental makes.
Gradually and slowly things began to shape themselves here, so that in the Automobile Club trials of 1907 the British vehicles, taken as a whole, made a better show than those of foreign make. Notable among the competitors was the C,ommer Car, which
went through the trials without a singlemechanical failure ; it was afterwards sold to Liptons, Ltd., and ran in their service until it had completed 300,000 miles (12 time:3 round the earth), and is believed to be, like
Charley's Aunt," "still running."
British goods have always had the reputation of being more durable than those coming from other countries, and when we did put our best efforts into that one ought not to grumble if only 10 per cent, of the cylinder castings were defective, whilst at that very moment the firm using these castings were getting other deliveries from France with 100 per cent. perfect cylinder blocks. As to our steel casters, they were even More behindhand with the thin-metal castings necessary for motor construction. One firm told the writer that he must not design anything that was less than half an inch in thickness, or it could not be cast in steel. Even flywheels, which seem to be a simple thing to cast in iron, gave trouble, and defective castings were common for a long time.
On the other hand, many of our industries that were of a more modern kind, such as aluminium casting, drop forging, etc., rose immediately to the needs a the new industry and were never found to be lagging. Sheffield put its hack into the production of special steels in bars and for drop forgings for motor construction, and were soon giving us all we needed.
The spring makers of this country rose splendidly to the occasion and gave us springs of all kinds that are used in motors, which were better than those procurable from any other country.
With regard to the machine tools necessary for the production of commercial motors, we can hardly be said, as a whole, to have kept our end up as we should have done. With the exception of a very few outstanding firms (mostly, from districts where machine tools were never. made before), we have not done so well as we might, with the result that-our motor factories are, even now, equipped with far too high a percentage of American machines.
To return to the commercial motors themselves, taken as they stand to-day, one of the main features which is found in almost every make of modern vehicle, no matter in what country it is produced, is of British development, and that is the worm drive. Another British achievement is he development of the bus and its organization, in which we certainly lead the world.
A careful and independent comparison ofthe vehicles shown in London with those shown in Paris and Berlin will prove that, apart. from Continental freak design and American price cutting, the durability and consequent low cost of upkeep and long life of the British commercial vehicle should appeal to all.
t h e commercial motor we were able to produce something that upheld our repu tation, as the foregoing instance demonstrates.
Apart from the difficulties experi enced in the mat ter of designing, there were others to be overcome here in production. The 20 years' start which we volunta rily gave to the foreigner in the race was a severe handicap to those responsible f o r production. Our I ron foundries were not used to such light and complicated cast ings • as motor cylinders, and at first made a ter rible mess of the job. The writer can remember a foundry in the Midlands saying c16