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).
Feasibility of in-house bakerlite moulding and comparing the reliability of Bosch versus Delco ignition systems.
| Identifier | WestWitteringFiles\F\February1921\ Scan43 | |
| Date | 7th November 1921 | |
| To HS.{Lord Ernest Hives - Chair} from R.{Sir Henry Royce} -3- R11/G16/2/21 Contd. that Mr. Clark should find out who controls the bakerlite patents in England, and see what it involves to put down a small plant to make our own mouldings. You must remember that U.S.A., Bosch, and others may be offering their productions below cost to get in, and so induce us to give up the idea of making our own, after which we should be asked a profitable price to continue. They well know that it would not pay us to be often changing our pattern, which would be necessary if we bought in another market. With reference to the Bosch ignition set, we notice that they twist the wires round to advance the ignition by hand. I do not know that this matters, but it is considered not so good as the Delco, in which the wires are stationary. We have never seen this Bosch ignition on any car, and we are of the decided opinion that it should be criticised and tested before any thought of adoption. Whereas, the Delco we have had considerable experience with, and should consider it would be found more reliable. This ignition, however, as far as we know, has still the defects that it will fire back, as all the other American ignition sets we know of. This is not an imaginary fault, but has occurred to us personally, the first and nearly every time the electric starter has been out of order. It occurred with the Remy ignition on the R.R. car, and Delco on the Buick. In addition to this fault, the only other complaint we know of with the Delco ignition is the apparent want of life in the distributor, owing to the steel contact running on the bakerlite. The only exception we have had of this fault was on the Packard, where a carbon contact was used. (Contd.) | ||