[mg-tabc] Itsaseasyto --- Near Enough Isn't !!

[PMS GB Ltd]

Viv points out in his interesting and oddly not too controversial posting
-
"Itsaseasytodoitrightastodoitwrong"

True to a point - the reality is that it's often far more difficult and
costly to
do it wrong - especially if you then have to replace or repair everything
that
broke etc. as a result of the wrongdoing.

When I was running my restoration business, a truely significant amount of
the business was in repairing incorrect work - sometimes true mechanical
disasters, other times just plain out of character so called restoration
work
that just was not in the period or style of the vehicle - never mind
whether
it was original or not! Some other engineering solutions were stunning in
their brilliance and technical overcorrectness. The period of the car and
ther original construction often seemed not to be a factor.

I have an early 1950's Connaught sports car, raced extensively in Africa
from the 50's, brought back to the UK and that has had a truely vast sum
of 10's of thousands of pounds, spent on it by a previous owner up to a
couple of years ago, by a well known English restoration company. It's
still
a long way from finished! Whilst much of the work is good, it's full of
bodges
of modern panel fixing, wrong materials, odd bolts and nuts, modern 1990's
electrical fittings (orininal Lucas are easily and as cheaply available),
tatty
brackets and fixings etc. etc... Previous work of their's I've seen also
had
similar problems - some actually dangerous such as the main live battery
cable being rerouted a short cut and so being trapped between chasiss and
body and wearing through rapidly. None of this was stuff that simple real
knowledge, or minimal research wouldn't have corrected at the outset.

So I'll continue to defend the originality crowd, and the researchers,
because
thats how we know what should be - the new owners can learn form this
knowledge, and we can all decide whether to go with the knowledge or carry
on bodging as we see fit.

So as a final note, "Its as easy to do it right as to do it wrong" might
not quite
be true in the long run, and brings to mind the related Engineer's addage
that
I try to work to of "near enough isn't"

Now must go and try and work out what sized needle was used to stitch the
early series TA hoods...........

Bye for now

Clive