Peter,
In my estimation the poor reputation of Lucas is not justified. We are
usually complaining about old cars when poor quality comes up. Plenty of
other electrics on old cars have problems. Heat, humidity, vibration,
dirt & outright abuse over a 40 year period will take their toll on any
electrics. I personally have had no more trouble with Lucas than with
Delco, Bosch & a few others.
Possibly the one single most common failure is in the bullet & spring
tube connectors used to join the wiring. They are subject to all kinds
of ills. Not sure that the connectors can be entirely blamed on Lucas.
I think that restored cars with top quality new wiring harnesses &
correctly done connectors have few problems.
I'll bet that you start a lot of discussion on this one. Opinions will vary.
Dave Russell
Peter van der Linden wrote:
> I am writing a story for my local car club magazine, and I would really
> like to get some feedback/ideas on my topic from fellow sufferers. The
> subject of the article is "Lucas Electrics".
>
> As everyone knows, Lucas has had a reputation among owners of Brit cars
> for 30 or more years (i.e. at least all the time I have been a British
> car owner). Lucas is said to be renowned for their lack of quality,
> which leads to stranded drivers, and many, many jokes (e.g. Lucas is the
> prince of darkness, the British drink warm beer because Lucas provides
> the refrigeration, Lucas didn't invent the short circuit, but they
> patented it, etc).
>
> I want to take a close look at Lucas quality.
> The questions that I could use ideas/suggestions on are:
> 1. is the Lucas reputation justified or not?
> 2. if it is justified, why does a second rate company continue being
> second rate for year after year? Is it really as simple as "because
> they can"?
> 3. Why wasn't Lucas driven out of the auto-electrics business years ago?
> Is it as simple as "there will always be a market for goods built down
> to a cost"? Why are their products so poor?
>
> Lucas war stories are most welcome, too.
>
> Peter
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