GP10

GPIO

I found your article “GPIO” most interesting, having owned a 38/250 SS Mercedes-Benz, purchased from Bunty Scott-Moncrieff in May 1932, for over 50 years, during which time every nut and bolt on it has passed through my fingers. I take issue, however, on “dragging very badly probably because of oil on the (clutch) plates”. It is practically impossible to get oil on the clutch plates because they run inside the rim of the “L” formation fly-wheel. This trouble, which perhaps you should tell Bob Roberts, begins to occur every 50,000 miles or no because the driving plates have serrations at their rims which fit into similar serrations in the fly-wheel rim. Centrifugal force causes the dust produced by friction to collect at the edges of the platrs and it hampers the free movement of these plat., which then have to warp instead of moving freely back and forward. The remedy is to drop the back aide and remove the bell housing and gearbox, exposing the fly-wheel, when the serrations can be cleaned out. I did this recently, and cured my own clutch drag. There are actually three, and not two, back axle ratios available: 3.0 to 1, 2.5 to 1 and 2 to 1. My accelerator pedal is dead centre between brake and clutch, and my capacity is 7,020 0.0. but the difference is possibly a matter of piston domes when you give it as 7,069 cc. Sandhurst, Kent RONALD R. CANN (Point taken! I was told oil might be responsible for the severe clutch drag I experienced — beings mere motoring writer and not an engineer I believed it. The engine size of a 38/250 h.p. Mercedes-Benz seems a matter of journalistic choice and, in fact, I am told by Walter Gibbs that in 1933 GPIO was entered for Shelsley Walsh as a 36/220 h.p., yet its engine size was given as 7,060 c.c. — Ed.]