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).
Resolving issues with a customer's car, comparing performance post-repair, and observing the owner's driving habits.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 47\1\ Scan030 | |
| Date | 18th May 1921 guessed | |
| PAGE 2. engine would only fire intermittently, causing an unpleasant humping of the gear. (d) That his engine was noisy. My driver mechanic - Boot - and I dealt with these points on his chassis one after the other. (a) We found the clutch brake stopped the clutch much too quickly. This was adjusted. (b) We found the magneto make and break was correctly adjusted, but that the magneto plugs were in a hopeless condition with oil, and also required gap corrections in some cases. The valve caps were all loose and required tightening. We checked the setting of the carburettor. Mr. Hordern described the starting up of his Rolls-Royce engine, when cold, as a regular clatter. As a matter of fact there was not much clatter - nothing like as much clatter as was made by his Lanchester when it was started up. A knock in No. 6 cylinder, however, remained after the engine was fairly warm. This knock could not be heard when the car was running. The car has run over 4,000 miles and undoubtedly wants decarbonizing. I explained to Mr. Hordern that this should be done soon, and he will send the car to us at Cricklewood, where the decarbonizing can be done at his expense, and the peaning out of the piston of No. 6 cylinder at our expense. Mr. Hordern could find nothing whatever to criticise in the performance of my car. It was quite obvious that he never had the opportunity of being driven on a car shewing anything like its general performance. I then took him out on his own car after we had worked on it, when he expressed surprise that we had managed to improve it so much. I found that the performance of his car was undoubtedly very lively, and I should say fully up to our standard practice, although the magneto refused to fire consistently if the speed was brought below 8 miles an hour, obviously a great improvement on the previous 15. To illustrate the attitude of the owner towards us, I asked him to drive his new Rolls-Royce on the return journey to his house, and I noticed that when we came to difficult pieces of ascent, he tried to make the worst of that instead of the best, either by not opening his accelerator fully or by allowing his ignition to remain a dozen notdes too late. He found the gear changing quite alright after our attention. PTO. | ||