Works Spitfires

When we imported ADU 4B back from the USA I applied to the DVLA for the V5 with the supporting paperwork. Imagine my surprise to find out when it came through that the registration had been applied for by a fairly well known character in the Spitfire racing scene back in the 90's, and had been tacked onto a Spitfire 1500 chassis number. This had occurred whilst 4B had been on display in a Swiss motor museum, but 'lost' to the UK experts, and historians at that time (pre Internet of course). Same sort of thing happened with a another well known car (not mine), but in different circumstances. This car had lain undisturbed since its factory days until its restoration in the 90's. When it came to MOT, and tax time it came as a big surprise to find out it wasn't registered to the owner anymore who then had to track down the 'tribute' car, and buy it to reunite the paperwork, with the actual car. Another one of my favorites occurred many years ago when a good friend of mine (who has an inordinate amount of first hand experience of racing/rallying history) and myself went along to a auction to view, and potentially buy a significant ex competition car. We asked to see the provenance only to find some of it consisted of letters, and receipts from the two of us from some years previously for a different car. I could go on (because similar stories surround a good proportion of the significant Triumph identities) , but you get the drift. What I would say is if you are ever in the lucky position of buying an ex factory competition Triumph take a good long look at its provenance. Any gaps in it's history at all, and its probably best to walk away, specially if it appears to have been re-registered in the period 1980 onward. It would be wrong to say that there was any collusion on the part of any organisation that lent any weight to these spurious applications for long dead, or off the radar cars back in the day. Back in the day they might not have had the value, or the interest they seem to have now so it might as have seemed relatively harmless, and as someone once said to me better for these plates to go to someone who is going to do a decent job of recreating these things, than some Tom, Dick or Harry. This subject has always potentially been a festering can of worms, and not peculiar to the Triumph World. Don't take everything you read at face value, don't listen to the keyboard experts, or Johnny come lately historians, do some proper research based on actual paper trails, and first hand experience.

There was a raft of Triumph works cars registrations reappearing in the mid 80's. I have traced most of these miraculous finds back to source.

Lots of Chinese whispers indeed! I will be very interested to see how this thread progresses. Be careful of what you have read, or have been told by an expert.

We have a bag full of new ones somewhere. I have always put a couple of new ones on every car we restore, nice finishing touch. Pop us an email if you still need.

Some of the larger carrier companies are now putting surcharges on top of the normal shipping charges to certain countries (USA for instance), and they are not willing to ship to some others at all (New Zealand for example). That shouldn't include Suffolk though Colin! Other than that we don't seem to be encountering any other shipping problems. The major problem is going to be longer term as the UK manufacturers, machine shops, etc close down, and stocks run down as a result. We are already finding certain shortages even at this early time, so expect longer term gaps in availability . As a major supplier into the trade we are already finding that they are ordering larger quantities from us in anticipation of an extended shut down.

Most of the reconditioners locally have either retired, or in the process of retiring as they can't compete with cheap imports. The chap that has rebuilt all our starters, dynamos, alternators for the past 30 odd years threw in the towel just before Christmas, and his mate in the trade that used to run a multi million pound outfit nearer Birmingham is on the point of closing up. The other problem was that most of the Lucas stuff had been through the mill more than once, and was getting very difficult to rebuild economicaly.

Triumph only used the Delco one in production when Lucas were on strike to keep the production lines going. I used to see a lot of them on 71/72 2.5PI saloons. Not as long lasting as the Lucas units, and quite rare now.

Pete Indeed. We lost over three hundred unique product lines last year through suppliers/manufacturers retiring, passing away, or going out of business. I seem to spend more time on resourcing these days than at any other time over the last 30 odd years.

Unfortunately the chap that assembled the brass ones for us passed away. Then one of the partners from the engineering company that turned the individual brass components also passed away, and his partner closed up shop, and retired at short notice. If you add this to the other retirements, and such, it was not a good year last year for us in our supply chain. However we did manage to get the adaptors made in stainless steel locally.

No I befuddled myself there, I had all types out in front of me, and I got mixed up with either Dolomite 18/50, or late HS6 equipped 2000 MKII . All types of Vitesse, and GT6 have the holes on the underneath. So apart from the black, and silver paint they look visually the same.

I didn't know they went up to MK11 (eleven)?

Hmm some interesting theory's on here about air box types. The back plate is indeed the same across the range, but its the front cover that changes. The MKI Vitesse/GT6 I (black painted) has a row of holes on the underneath face. The MKII Vitesse/GT6 II-III (silver painted) dosn't have the holes.

I seem to remember the TSSC shop selling this at one time. JK's ethos was always not to sell stuff he wouldn't fit to his own cars which included the above, and a certain brand of shock absorber, amongst others. We did ourselves out of a huge amount of trade when unleaded started to filter on to the forecourts, and he did his level best to put customers off buying unleaded heads from us. We were sat on a mountain of core cylinder heads which we could have easily converted, but he always told customers to come back when/if they actually detected any exhaust valve seat recession. They either headed his advice, or went off and bought one elsewhere from the less honest end of the trade. As a consequence we still have stilages full of heads here!

They are available new. https://www.canleyclassics.com/demoapp/?ptno=806956

They are 14's.

Any rumors about our early demise are a bit premature! Trade was a bit slow yesterday so I thought I would drum up a bit of business by shifting some of the used tackle we have here. We have never really pushed the second hand parts side of the business as most of the year we are simply to busy to go ferreting around finding that elusive widget. We inherited mountains of the stuff from JK back in the 90's. Many might not remember that JK's operation were regularly breaking Triumphs in the 80-90's, and importing containers full of stuff back from New Zealand . Going through those points made above; That's because they want you to buy new, Dave. Not at all. Nothing better than selling a used something that has been sat around for 30+ years, rather than shifting its new equivalent that you have either had to buy in new, or get made with a smaller margin. Canleys really wound down their retail side a few years ago, closed their counter and so on. In the end the counter side of the business was tiny and hardly worth employing someone to be there on the off chance of a bit of passing trade. On the other hand the mail order side had been taking off exponentially since JK started the very first classic car traders web site, and we added on-line buying early on. We are still doing the numbers but it's all on-line, or trade to trade these days. Sure he disposed of all his gearbox rebuild spares a few years ago. True we have sold a bit of our overdrive core to some of the specialists, but we did have rather a lot! The rest of the gearbox core, and differential core is still here. He also posted quite a few years that he had 1000 ( or was it 1000's) of engines, can't see him still having all those. We went through it back when the Chinese were still paying inflated price for scrap and ditched all the iffy stuff. To conclude I have no immediate desire to retire. I have far to many cars (and vans!) I still need to restore to even think about walking away from probably the best source of spares that are left that happen to be on my doorstep that makes it relatively easy to do (however if you have any spare Pony parts knocking about ping me a mail). Dave

Lucas Press Release for this very car

https://www.canleyclassics.com/demoapp/?ptno=704873F

More recent picture of G11

We have a batch of these made every five or so years, and Bill has always come forward to take a few, and make it viable, but we have always stocked the bulk of the production run (only sold the last of the last run last year). We get Owen Springs to do them for us based on MOQ (minimum order quantity) that would otherwise wouldn't be viable unless Bill had got involved. Its a common story in the trade, a lot of this low volume stuff wouldn't get made unless another trader, or two tagged on. Now if only I could have persuaded another trader to take a few of those Courier grills we did a few years ago.

Really?!!!!

Who had them made?!!!