From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
The design and performance of horns, battery ignition, headlamps, and windscreen wipers.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 37\1\ scan 202 | |
| Date | 5th June 1931 | |
| Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/HEW/AD5.6.31. contd. -2- that samples of each of these horns shall be sent to us for trial. They considered that our horn should be placed outside the bonnet and we are inclined to agree with them as the noise of the horn is annoying to those inside a saloon car where the horn is inside. With regard to battery ignition, they consider the outside primary coil to be much superior to the inside primary type (as present R.R. standard) in that it lends itself to easier and cheaper production and also it is possible to obtain a much higher secondary voltage. At the same time the ballast is deleted. They consider that a lot of our contact point trouble may be due to our arrangement of coil and ballast. When switching on, the current in the ignition circuit is momentarily very large and this large current they consider damages the points. They are using circular condensers of much lower capacity than we use and we propose to try a still lower capacity condenser as an experiment on our own ignition. We had a talk with their lamp designer with reference to the P.100 headlamps and he stated that in view of the new regulations limiting the size of bulb to 36 watt they were hard at work improving the efficiency in conjunction with the G.E.Co. so that, if possible, very little light will be sacrificed by dropping from 48 watt to 36 watt. They do not consider that their windscreen wiper is developed sufficiently for the R.R. car and they will be in a position very shortly to submit an improved type for our approval. Finally, Messrs. Lucas have freely offered us for test a battery ignition set complete, with a request that we shall compare it with our own and let them know the result. Hs{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair}/H.West. | ||