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).
Difficulties in sourcing, manufacturing, and testing new Lucas headlamps.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 167\1\ img129 | |
| Date | 23th April 1937 | |
| To Cx.{Major Len W. Cox - Advertising Manager} from Rm{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}/Wst.. 6116. Rm{William Robotham - Chief Engineer}/Wst.8/AP.23.4.37 Re. New type Lucas Head Lamps. We have noted your Cx.{Major Len W. Cox - Advertising Manager}1/KW. 22.4.37, and would say we have been fully alive to the fact that these lamps were urgently required on our chassis in view of the considerably improved appearance obtained with the same. There is no question about this, as both on P.3., Wraith and Bentley chassis the lamps look very striking and improve the front appearance. We have had a lot of difficulty in getting lamps from Messrs Lucas, and we have only had three pairs to date, the fourth pair not yet having been delivered to us. The difficulty has been in making the reflector which is an entirely new design for Messrs Lucas, and has been extremely difficult to manufacture. In fact, the first two pairs of lamps were delivered to us without ribbed reflectors i.e. with the ribbing on the front glass only. Furthermore, the tests on the first pair of lamps fitted to 35.EX. were squashed due to the accident in France. Of the other two pairs, we have one fitted to Bentley chassis B.56.BN.{W.O. Bentley / Mr Barrington} and the other to one of the new Wraiths. We have had trouble on the former chassis with the head lamp reflectors dithering and we are working with Messrs Lucas in the development of a stronger return spring for the reflector. This may involve a stronger electro-magnetic dipper unit, but we cannot decide on this at the moment until we have done further tests. It may be that these lamps on the Wraith and P.3. chassis will not require this stronger spring owing to their softer suspension and tests are being made to ascertain this. Otherwise the lamps are perfectly satisfactory, giving a very good driving light and we hope to be able to issue Standardisation Sheets very shortly. As a matter of fact, we have informed Messrs Lucas that we must have these lamps on show at Olympia in their final form, and they are already tooling up the lamps with this end in view. The modifications to the dipper unit if necessary, will not interfere with the major tool requirements. continued | ||