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 discussing the investigation of gauge failures in customer cars, including one belonging to the Prince of Wales.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 44\4\ Scan163 | |
| Date | 20th January 1930 | |
| Messrs. Rolls-Royce, Ltd., Date 20.1.30. Page 2 failures on cars now in the hands of your customers, but feel confident that if we were able to get access to the cars on which the failures have occurred, we could quickly trace the cause of the trouble. We note that the gauge from the Prince of Wales's car is being returned to us, and we will immediately attend to it and investigate the cause of the failure. You will realise the difficulty of tracing the cause of failure if the gauge head itself displays no fault when it is returned to us, and without being in any way positive on the matter, we think that a certain percentage of trouble must necessarily have occurred owing to faulty installation and mis-handling in the early stages, in addition to any actual gauge failures which may have happened. On going through our records of all the material returned by you since the last week in November, we find that we are unable to trace more than two gauges with leaky cement joints. One of these was under your order P.6769, dated 30th October 1929, and another was exchanged by us for your Lilliehall depot, of which no record came through Derby. Two other gauges had the pressure balance capillary blocked, and in these instances it was impossible to tell whether this had been done by handling, or a wet air line had blown the gauge, and thus blocked the capillary. | ||