How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

Anyone read this? There is a bit about Fords in it, and how if a part that was not exactly right it could stop the assembly line. But at Rolls Royce they could just file a bit off.


https://www.booktopia.com.au/exactly...008241773.html

Re: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

I admittedly did not read the book but we need to remember that they are not comparing Apples to Oranges when comparing the assembling of a R/R vs. a Model-A in the one of them was designed to be hand crafted and one was mass produced. In restoration work, most true restoration involves hand crafting which requires much more labor.

Re: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

I haven't read it either. Just flipped thru it at the book shop.

However, as a young joey, I was told, by a professor of engineering that what you pay for in a Rolls Royce is the close tolerances.

Re: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

Well to a certain extent, that is true however you can get close tolerances on a Lexus too. It is more about not selling enough widgets to justify mass manufacturing which then means they must be hand-built. The biggest issue with producing anything is that labor costs are too expensive these days.

Re: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

The model A was manufactured to tight tolerances,a Rolls Royce was fitted to tight tolerances

Re: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

Good Morning all...Bang On, Kurt! I remember reading a article in one of the auto magazines years ago in the late 1960's and it pointed out that a Ford of that time would cost $20,000 if it was hand assembled as a Rolls Royce was. I don't know about today, but I imagine that if one split that labor and materials on a Rolls, the labor is far, far more than the materials. Henry solved the problem with the Model T when he went to the moving assembly line...I had a long ride about 80 miles in a 1929 Rolls in Ireland a few years ago and on the back roads, at 35 miles an hour, in the rain, it sounded very much like a great big, sort of lumbering, Model 'A' Ford. Go Figure! Ernie in Arizona

Re: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

And yet, when Rolls decided that they needed an automatic transmission, what did they do? They bought Hydramatics from GM! Their engineers decided that was better than what they could build!

Re: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

True, plus all of the lawsuits and the EPA and with the Big Three, the obscene salaries of the CEO's.

Toyota's CEO makes about 1/7th of the lady running GM. In America if you are a screw up in Business they award you with multi-million dollar bonuses as you exit the door. In Japan, they take failure at heart and suicide is not uncommon for failing:eek:

Re: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
 

On the matter of Rolls buying the hydromatic what they did was buy the rights to manufacture the trans for there use only. The first thing they did was to look at the drawings and decided that the tolerances were to sloppy. They then redrew the drawing to tighter tolerances. Then when they built the first ones and were testing them they found that they did not work. They then built the production trans. to the GM print.