Readers’ Letters

Flywheel fluidity

Congratulations on a lively and varied TCM! That same publicity leaflet on the intriguing BSA 500FF of 1933 gets another airing, I see. (March 2018, p87).

As many will know, BSA bought the highly prestigious Daimler car and commercial vehicle company in 1910, with the latter going on to supply the 105bhp sleeve-valve engines used in the early First World War tanks. The entire Daimler car range used sleeve valve engines from 1909 to 1933, incorporating patents filed by an American, Charles Yale Knight.

I digress; the tanks needed a transmission that was much more forgiving and easy to handle than a ‘crash’ gearbox, so a Major Wilson was engaged by the tank design team at Foster’s Engineering in Lincoln to come up with something better. He improved upon the epicyclic or ‘planetary’ transmissions which had gone before on some Lanchester cars and the Ford Model T. The Ford used a simple system of the driver pressing