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).
Reliability and potential redesign of the battery ignition distributor head and rotor.
Identifier | ExFiles\Box 32\5\ Scan067 | |
Date | 14th November 1927 | |
To BY.{R.W. Bailey - Chief Engineer} from EFC. X6096 EFC3/T14.11.27. BATTERY IGNITION DISTRIBUTOR HEAD AND ROTOR. Y4041 May we please refer you to our reports EFC3/T23.8.27 and EFC1/T22.10.27, also to R's note RL/M8.11.27. Although we can prove that the distributor head can track and be ruined when there is no H.T. delivery from one or more of the six H.T. distributor terminals, and that the intended safety gap of the base is not really a safety gap at all, i.e. insofar as saving the distributor head is concerned, nevertheless we do not know definitely of any case of failure of this head on a customer's car. It is true we have had a case of failure on an experimental car, but this probably occurred in [strikethrough]such[/strikethrough] exceptional conditions experienced in tests. There does not appear therefore any immediate necessity for changing the design of the distributor head. With regard to the rotor, however, the matter appears to be different. In addition to one or two cases on expl. cars, we know of three cases of failure of the rotor on customers' cars, one of which was probably an internal fault in the moulding, as this was not a case of surface failure like the other two. We have, of course, the LeC. design of mushroom rotor, and this is an improvement in that respect, but as reported, we feel that it does not go the whole way because it has not got the air impelling effect of the old rotor, and we think the mushroom rotor should be provided with vanes. We have put this up to R.{Sir Henry Royce} and the only remark he has made is contained in RL/M8.11.27. Do you think we might send him a scheme of our proposed mushroom rotor, with vanes? If so, perhaps you would adopt this course, as we are anxious to get an improvement in this direction with as little delay as possible. EFC. | ||