Having read Doug Nye's BRM magnum Opus , Tony Rudd's book and recently Dick Salmon's BRM mechanic book I am struck by how many little things kept going wrong on the P25. Many were put down to excessive vibration of big 4 cylinder engine but Vanwall also ran big 4 ( which also caused vibration problems but ones which were fixed) . Similarly Cooper and Lotus ran a 2 1/2 litre Climax four.
BRM seemed to be recognised as having very high engineering standards .They had a large drawing office, enough machine tools to build engines and at least two ex Rolls Royce aero engine men – Tony Rudd and Stuart Trevelyan
Wishbones were made with tapered shapes, welded and stress relieved versus Lotus’s thick tube and brazing approach etc. I know BRM had very few serious chassis failures but brake lines kept failing which is pretty serious fault and throttle linkages often failed. “
So why so many “ niggly” failures when s few major chassis ones? Was it poor detail design, lack of reaction or did eh BRM four have some vibration modes different to the other 4 cylinder engines I think it had different balancing philosophy IIRC