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).
Developing a dual ignition system with magneto and battery for the Goshawk car.
| Identifier | WestWitteringFiles\J\November1922\ Scan106 | |
| Date | 19th July 1917 | |
| contd:- -2- As soon as we can produce a Goshawk which we are prepared to send out to customers that has two independent ignitions which can be switched on at will, one might consider all the present standard Goshawks with the single battery ignition, obsolete. It would be absolutely certain that if we were prepared to send such cars abroad, customers in England would also demand similar cars. We do not see how Sales Dept. are going to help matters by running a car about with a magneto from a Colonials point of view. It is not that we are not aware of the difficulties - the trouble is that we have got nothing else to offer and whatever is done, it will take time. We are not satisfied with the present arrangement for applying the magneto. We are not sitting still and accepting the arrange-ment of fitting two ignitions and yet having to dive under the bonnet in order to change over from one to the other. As a matter of fact, in a week or 10 days time we shall have running a Goshawk car which will have two plugs in each cylinder and two independent ignitions which can be switched on separately or both together. We are doing this without waiting for designs from W.W. but we expect that it may be some considerable time before we get it perfect. Also, we are making an effort to try and obtain a magneto with an automatic advance. If we can obtain a satisfactory magneto of this type, we should get equal results with magneto as with battery and it would then be immaterial which was fitted in case we still have only one plug. contd:- R.R. 199 (250T) (SD676 19-7-17) MP180865 | ||