Number Rings for Labeling High Tension Ignition Wires
i.e. 'Wire markers' for Pre-WWII R-R/B Automobiles
You may be disappointed if you came to this site looking for pastry or bread recipes. We don't have those kinds of Sunset Rolls. Here a 'Rolls' is a Rolls-Royce manufactured automobile and 'Sunset' refers to a garage address. We specialize in the small plastic number rings found on the spark plug wires of pre-WWII R-R/B automobiles. But even if you came here hungry, feel free to look around.

Except for the pre-Ghost and earlier Ghost series cars we can supply the correct style(s) of wire markers for all of the pre-war models. (There is an L4 style for some late Bentleys that we do not have and have never seen. It may never have been produced - see our notes.) Early Ghost owners should be patient as we do have samples of several of the early Ghost style markers and are working to make them available as well.

If you have questions about styles, availability, prices, or general comments, please contact us. Determining the production series for a car and its original marker styles often requires a chassis number. For that reason we request that you include your chassis number(s) in your message.

If you are an owner and want to quickly see what styles our research indicates that your car should have, go to our Usage by Model page and click on the link to your model in the left-hand column. Additional links on those pages will let you view photos and drawings of your style(s) and read additional historical details for those so interested. All cars except for the later 20/25's called for their engines to have at least 2 styles of wire markers; both ends of the spark plug wires rarely used the same styles.


Our various pages provide a large amount of information on the subject of wire markers and their usage. In many cases you can even view the original engineering drawings of the parts as drawn by R-R. You may or may not want to delve into such a level of detail. The reason its all presented here is because the question of which styles were used on what models is not always easy to answer. Ambiguities and lack of information for some models force us to make educated guesses about which style would be more correct. For those of you taking the short route to your car's model page, you will see which styles we think your car should likely have. The other information on the site is the background data we used to come to our conclusions.

NOTE: Links marked with an asterisk (*) are between 0.5 and 1.8MB and may require considerable download time depending upon your connection speed.


All pre-WWII Rolls-Royce and Bentley automobiles built by R-R used small identification rings at either end of their high tension ignition wires. Nearly always these rings were called a 'Bush' with various additional descriptors: 'Bush, Battery Ignition Wire' was a typical factory designator. For the Phantom III these items were labeled simply as a 'Sleeve' but all other known automobile, tank and airplane drawings call them a 'Bush'. Since neither bush nor sleeve describe the function of these items particularly well, we here at SunsetRolls refer to all of them as wire markers.

Whether they are a bush or a sleeve, the purpose of these wire markers was to identify the destination and/or origin of an ignition wire. Usually these were on a spark plug wire and the principal identifying character was one of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 indicating either a distributor/magneto position or cylinder number of the attached spark plug. There were various other complications and variations upon this theme which we, hopefully, explain on our other pages.

To fully appreciate this site, you need to own one of these fine machines. If you don't already have one, we encourage you to add one to your garage soon. And if your vehicle has lost some of these markers in the past 65 to 100 years, we may have just what you need to complete an under-bonnet restoration.

The information presented on this site is believed to be correct, but opinions expressed are those of us here at SunsetRolls and not those of any of the organizations mentioned or those for which we provide web links. We base our observations on information collected from various sources. We also present a great deal of that information here so that you may study it and come to your own conclusions. If after that study, your conclusions don't match ours then we have more work to do. We strive for accuracy and authenticity and are especially eager to learn of inaccuracies, omissions or additional information pertinent to the subjects discussed.

Unless stated otherwise, the production series designations that we use for the various models are those from "The Rolls-Royce Motor Car" by Anthony Bird and Ian Hallows, Third Revised Edition, 1972, ISBN: 0 7134 1461 2. This text, sometimes referred to as "Bird & Hallows" or simply "B&H", is useful in determining which chassis numbers were in which production series. Unfortunately for us, it makes no mention of wire markers.
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