Roddy At Ricardo
(09 Sep 02)
(Editor's Note: Rufus is away. In his absence, we have been able to engage the services of Roddy Rolls-Bentley, one of his colleagues from Single Malt Monitor.)
"Not a bad little spot for this kind of thing," I said expansively as we strolled on a sunny morning towards a pleasant enough industrial estate at Shoreham in Sussex. "Much of it yours?"
My companion looked puzzled: "I don't quite follow you."
"The industrial estate," I said, waving a hand in the direction of the extensive property ahead. "Which building does Ricardo rent?"
"This whole complex," he replied rather stiffly, "is Ricardo's Bridge Works. We have been here since the early years of the last century, in the home town of our founder Sir Harry Ricardo."
"No branch operations, then?" I asked in a jocular tone, having not yet grasped the fact that on-duty Ricardo people, except when they have certain well-rehearsed lines, don't do jokes.
"Apart from Leamington Spa, Prague, Chicago and Detroit," he said, rather dryly, "no."
I could see this might become quite heavy going, but cheered up as we entered the main reception building, and saw a pair of vintage motor-cycles - a Triumph-Ricardo on one display stand, a Harley-Davidson on the other. Sir Harry Ricardo (1885-1974, I observe from my hastily scribbled notes) contributed to both designs.
We were at Shoreham mainly to hear about Ricardo's work over the last few years with diesel engines, and in particular the company's co-operation with Renault. One of the rooms we shuffled into had sound piped in, and we listened to recordings taken inside the cabins of three diesel models.
Easy To Tell Them Apart
The first was a terrible racket, the second was much more restrained, and the third was little more than a purr. Our guide said they were, in order, a Renault diesel from the early 1990s, a current Clio dCi and a dCi Laguna.
"Are you sure you played these in the correct order," I asked, to inject some kind of party spirit, "and didn't slip in a petrol engine as number three?"
That managed to upset both the Ricardo and the Renault people present, and earned me a tug on the jacket sleeve from somebody sitting behind. On looking round, I recognised that rather earnest and stuffy character Robert Lewis, who hissed, "Shut up, you idiot. Do you want to get us all kicked out of here?"
Oh, right. Message received and understood. Best behaviour from now on, I assured him.
Then the subject of steam came up. It turned out that, a few years ago, Ricardo built a prototype steam engine, designed to be installed in a car, with a power output of 150bhp and an internal temperature of something like 530 degrees Centigrade.
"Don't you fellows know that steam-engined cars are a bit passé?" I enquired. "Rather a waste of time if you aren't building vintage locomotives for some kind of end-of-the-pier scale model railway, surely?"
More grim looks. It seems that the steam engine project was an entirely successful commission from General Motors, which just wanted to know if the thing was possible.
Q&A Out Of Sync
I cheered up considerably during a question-and-answer session. It started off rather awkwardly, because when you ask a Ricardo person a technical question nothing happens for about ten seconds. It's as if you've put a coin in a slot machine with a built-in delay.
What's happening, of course, is that he's mulling over the question on the basis of all the confidential work the company does, and deciding whether to answer it or to say, because you're not authorised to know what they're doing in that particular field of research, "I'm sorry. I can't tell you."
Not being aware of this problem at first, I asked one question, watched the Ricardo chap apparently go into a trance, so followed it up with a second question on a different topic, just as he answered the first one. This is possibly why my notebook seems to have questions about common rail injection systems mixed up with answers about the Ricardo transmission in the Audi R8s which have been wiping the floor with the opposition at Le Mans.
There were a couple of good, crisp replies, though. For example: what's your favourite engine layout? Quick as a flash, "When *** created the engine, it was a [ inline ] six cylinder ." What's the practical limit to the power and torque achievable with a turbo diesel car engine? "The transmission."
Getting The Old Heave-Ho
We also went to one of their NVH labs, where they put engines on test beds and measure them in intricate detail for noise, vibration and harshness, then suggest to the manufacturers various ways of reducing all three.
The test lab we visited is insulated against all manner of internal and external noises and vibrations, and the engine was very carefully mounted, but it's still in an extremely odd place, right under the flight path to Shoreham Airport.
"Don't you think," I suggested to the fellow who ran it, "that with all these single and twin piston-engined planes throbbing overhead every five minutes, this is a loony place to have a noise and vibration lab?"
I never heard the official answer. Lewis hauled me outside and snarled, "That's quite enough from you. I'll write the CARkeys feature on Ricardo."
And, having the editor's ear, he probably will.
(Editor's Note: he did. Here it is.)
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