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).
Letter to The Lodge Sparking Plug Co. regarding spark plug reliability for upcoming Atlantic flight attempts.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 79\1\ scan0153 | |
| Date | 8th January 1919 | |
| R.R. 235A (500 T) (S.D. 408. 26-4-17.) Bm. 2/156/13. x601 EH2/LG.8119. 8th January 1919. X.601 X.3420. Messrs The Lodge Sparking Plug Co.Ltd., R U G B Y. Dear Sir, At an early date there will be several attempts made to fly the Atlantic with 'planes fitted with the Rolls Royce engines. You will appreciate as well as we do that it will be necessary to have some very reliable sparking plugs. The engines will be the ordinary standard type as regards compression etc. We do not consider your KR3 plug is sufficiently reliable for this job. The best plugs we have had from you have been the KR4A. These have run now for 70 or 80 hours without any trouble. We are starting as soon as possible running a series of tests on a standard engine for long durations to prove that the engine will runn continuously without giving any trouble. For these tests, of course, we wish to use the sparking plugs we shall recommend for the flight. We suggest you supply us with 30 KR4A plugs so that we can runn them on one of these tests. We are returning to you the D.11 plugs which you sent to us for test. These ran well for 60 or 70 hours, then the majority of the centre electrode points broke off. Yours faithfully, | ||