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).
Failure of Lucas electrical equipment and assigning responsibility for the faults.
| Identifier | Morton\M16\ img039 | |
| Date | 23th October 1921 | |
| From R.{Sir Henry Royce} X.4165 X.30146 RE LUCAS ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT. *Mr. Whitehead infers that a good deal of blame due to the failure of the Lucas equipment on our cars is due to our technical department not being in touch with Lucas.* I cannot believe that any such act on our part can excuse them for their failure. They cannot blame us for the unreliable working of the accumulator cutout, and the want of reliability in their fuses. Moreover, they cannot blame us for the errors of design in the connections on the dynamo. All of these things have failed on my own car in my own hands. To the best of my knowledge they have been advised repeatedly, or else why have they ever done anything to attempt to make lower speed machines and better contacts, etc. If, however, the work has been neglected by us, somebody is to blame, as Mr. Clark and the Works have been repeatedly advised of the failure of this apparatus. Certainly it seems that you cannot blame Mr. Northey or anyone outside the testing department. So the blame lies between our test department and Messrs. Lucas, and any failure of our test department cannot excuse the Lucas Company, unless our test department definitely instructed them to make something which is not standard with the Lucas company. Even in such a case the Lucas technical department should point out that they would not make or be responsible for unsatisfactory arrangements. I cannot see, therefore, that there is any ground for excusing the Lucas company, although we can blame ourselves for allowing ourselves to purchase bad equipment, and to go on fitting the equipment when it was proved unsatisfactory. *This I have endeavoured to stop by jerking the reins rather roughly.* I am sorry I did not do so before. R.{Sir Henry Royce} | ||