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).
The potential failure of bakelite distributor heads and the effectiveness of safety gaps.
| Identifier | WestWitteringFiles\Q\2-July1927-September1927\ 53 | |
| Date | 23th August 1927 | |
| To R.{Sir Henry Royce} (Contd.) -2- struck across at an angle to the inside distributor bakelite surface and then ran down to the metal. There is little doubt that a distributor head which was forced to run without delivering sparks, would track and be ruined. Or, put in another way, the intended safety gap is not a safety gap. For my own part, I have been not a little surprised that we have not had more failures of these bakelite pieces. I think I have previously remarked (some considerable time ago, when we had to go to stabalite coil cases) that to be consistent we ought to get rid of the bakelite pieces on the distributor. Although we have had, say two, failures of distributor heads on experimental cars probably due to running under experimental conditions, we cannot distinctly recall any case of failure of such a distributor head being brought to us as a failure on a customer's chassis. Possibly there has been one case, but that not recently. EFC. I did not press the point due to absence of failures in service. | ||