A CHASSIS WITH A TWO-SPEED AXLE.
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Brief Details of the Latest International Chassis.
THERE appears to be an increasing tendency towards the employmeat of auxiliary gears by which the normal number of ratios can be doubled. At first, most of these supplementary gears were applied to the Ford, but their employment has proved so advantageous in certain instances that their use has extended to other makes of chassis and in some of these the gears can hardly be called " supplementary," because they constitute part of the original design. As an example of this, we may mention the new 1-..ton International model known as the SixSpeed Special, which incorporates a rear axle combined with a two-speed gear of the sliding type. The axle is semi-floating and the final-drive gearing is of the spiral-bevel pattern. The axle housing is of malleable iron with the banjo arranged vertically, and all the gearing is mounted in a removable carrier.
The bevel-pinion shaft has, formed Integrally with it, a large spur gear with_ internal dog teeth. The main shaft is spigotted into the bevel-pinion shaft and carries a sliding pinion with dog teeth which can be slid into mesh with those in the large spur gear, thus giving the higher of the auxiliary ratios—in other words, direct drive.
There is a fixed countershaft ou which run two pinions also formed integrally and mounted on Hyatt roller bearings. The smaller of the two pinions meshes with the spur gear to which we have already referred. The sliding pinion on the main shaft—the former, incidentally, moving on 10 splines—can be moved forward and into mesh with the larger pinion on the countershaft, thus giving the lower ratio.
As regards the' remainingpart of the c28 chassis, the engine has four cylinders of 3i-in. bore and 4f-in. stroke, with Ricardo heads. This is mounted as a unit with the dry-plate clutch and a three-speed gearbox, the whole being suspended at three points. The power developed is 34 b.h.p. at 2,500 r.p.m. From the gearbox to the rear axle the drive is conveyed through a propeller shaft equipped with mechanical split ring universal joints—a type which is becoming popular in the United 8tat3s.
The service brake acts on the rear wheels only, whilst the emergeney hand-brake takes action on a drum mounted at the front end of the propeller shaft.
Steering is effected by Ross cam-and lever gear. Semi-elliptic springs ore provided at each end.