TESTING TIMES
Several readers have asked for more information about the photograph used last month, with me in my 20s working inside the Rover test cell, with a P6 saloon car. It would be the mid-1960s.
The test equipment was interesting, because it was the only one of its type, built by Heenan & Froud of Worcester. It was situated within the P6 assembly hall in the North Works at Solihull.
Up until the arrival of the P6 saloon, all production vehicles were given a run around the test track at the rear of the factory, which was little more than a single carriageway around the fields of the tenant farmer at Foredrove
In the early 1950s the fencing around these fields was almost non-existent or poorly maintained and there were a couple of instances when the local women were unaware of the purpose of this track and were found pushing their prams along the test track! At this point it was decided to erect a five foot mesh fencing around all the field borders.
Soon, there was so much stuff flying around the test track, it was decided that it couldn't cope with any more vehicles. So, at the end of the assembly line, there were three fairly standard rolling roads for checking throttle responses, etc., and then they moved onto some brake-testing equipment. This was a fairly new procedure at the time, although fairly standard nowadays.
There was a quality area within this assembly area and the car dynamometer was situated in that department. The vehicle would receive some degree of running in and then given a full throttle power curve. It wasn't that successful because it didn't matter how many fan blowers you had around the vehicle, there was always some degree of heat damage (slight burning) to the under seal.
This was obviously considered unacceptable to a customer’s car, but there were always plenty of vehicles going through the system destined to be used by senior management, so we were able to test these in order to maintain a regular quality check on the production line quality.
The test rig was further developed to enable it to do life testing. It was possible to reproduce any road condition with the equipment and there was a 250-hour cycle that was the equivalent representative) of 50,000 miles.
Later the test rig was modified to run in four-wheel-drive and Land Rovers were also endurance tested.