Burman and Sons Ltd, of Ryland Road,

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

, West Midlands, was a company that manufactured Burman-Douglas

steering Steering is the control of the direction of motion or the components that enable its control. Steering is achieved through various arrangements, among them ailerons for airplanes, rudders for boats, cylic tilting of rotors for helicopters, ...

gear. Their worm and nut design of steering gear was fitted to pre-war vehicles such as the Ford Eight and the Ford Prefect, the Bedford CA, plus heavy trucks and off-road vehicles - both pre and post-war. In its day, Burman-Douglas steering-gear was regarded as "...a 'quality' feature of a car chassis specification," though the worm and nut design was eventually surpassed by the more direct

rack and pinion rack and pinion is a type of linear actuator that comprises a circular gear (the '' pinion'') engaging a linear gear (the ''rack''). Together, they convert between rotational motion and linear motion: rotating the pinion causes the rack to be d ...

design which dominates today. The company also manufactured motorcycle gearboxes during part of its history.

References

Automotive companies of England Automotive steering technologies Defunct companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands Manufacturing companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands {{motorvehicle-company-stub