Wilsons Sandbox

----- Original Message ----- [b]From:[/b] instruments@vintagerestorations.com [b]To:[/b] cbrenner01@snet.net [b]Sent:[/b] Monday, February 25, 2002 5:14 PM [b]Subject:[/b] T Type Green There has been great discussion from all quarters regarding the colour of MG dials. As my company has had a considerable hand in the matter, I think it may be helpful to give some of the historical details which have resulted in the colour you have all seen for many years. As you may know my Business started from a hobby back in the late sixties. At that time Thomas Richfield traded in Broadstone Place ,London, and being part of the Smith group of companies, quite a lot of repair work was sent from the Smith works in Oxgate lane down to Richfields. Smiths repaired and built new gauges, for example pressure and temperature, for TC albeit with later 'half' pointers, whilst Richfield concentrated on Speemometers and Revolution Counters, cables and so on At that time no one company dealt with a 'set' of dashboard instruments, switches, lamps, etc. This is where we started ,and christened our company 'The Complete Dashboard Service'. Historically Lucas usually obtained the electrical work contract for many British motor cardbuilders, Riley, Singer, Lea Francis, and M.G. to name but a few. With this contract, for some reason, they aslo provided the ammeter , lamps, warning lamps and panels. So ,all who search for British Jaeger original Ammeters, will not find them.! How difficult it must have been for Lucas to spray and print dials to match Smiths, unfortunately I have not been able to discover who did what and where! One therefore had the choice of Smith or Richfield, for gauge and speedometer work with a number of gaps in between, like the ammeter, which is where we came in. Now, regarding paint. The original Smiths equipment schedules 1937 to 1939 describe the TA/TB colour as Avon GREEN. The TC is described as Avon GREEN, Polychromatic enamel, all of which was in fact the early days of Metallic paints, which as many of you will know are notorious for pigment fading, which still applies today, as you can often tell a modern car has been partly resprayed by the mismatch of depth of colour. Around 1969/70 Smiths were pad printing replacement dials, green metallic,( which was produced by an Ault and Wiborg colour matching machine owned by a company nearby to the Oxgate Lane factory) for speedometers and revoolution counters (off down to Richfields) and 2" gauge dials, But... no ammeters! At that time we began stamping out our own ammeter dial blanks, and with the co operation of Smiths, obtained the same paint code and purchased the same cellulose paint from their supplier. We were very lucky to purchase from Lucas the last remaining brand new BM ammeter bezels, after which the tooling was broken up. we had about 800 at the time and finished up restoring batches of 25 with new bezels for Gerry Goguen of Abingdon Spares. Oh, to still have some left. Due to rationisation, and deterioration of old printing plates some of the gauge codes were a later variant. But in order to obtain a complete set to the same colour ,is was necessary to follow what Smiths had chosen as their interpretation of the origianl Avon Green, not blue, bluey silver ,or anyhting else but Green.! Gradually Smith took less and less interest in restoration work, until they finally closed and stripped the factory in 1983, destroying and sending off for scrap metal huge quantities of material and tooling, selling the shelving and machinery in a very sad sale that we attended. The roof finally being removed to comply with requirements to no longer pay council taxes. The instrument division producing more modern instruments was sold to Lucas who located at a plant in Wales. About the same time Thomas Richfield Ltd was sold to Speedograph in Nottingham who still trade as Speedograph Richfield ltd. Richfield continued to trade in London for a few more years before relocating in Nottingham. So in the early seventies Green was Green, and we began filling in the Gaps and providing the complete service. So if you ordered from Smiths, Richfield or us an extra gauge the chances were it would be a match. We saw no reason to do further research and create another colour. As time passed we built more tooling for dial blanks and purchased printing equipment to enable us to create our own sets of dials as it became increasingly difficult to obtain from Smiths as they reduced this side of their work. We received a considerable amount of help and advice from them, and were allowed to purchase a printing machine that had been taken to Wales and not used. So in the early days of MG restoration the lead was taken by Smiths, and what followed was a continuation of their decisions based on their own experience and factory records. We have to the best of our ability followed these principles. In latter years the British Jaeger Trade mark was not continued, and after thirty plus years of trading and respecting the quality of the marks we have been allowed to resurect the trade mark in our name at the Patent Office, So I feel we have acheived something even if the colour opinions rumble on.!! I hope this will go some way to explaining the reasons why the present colour is as it is.