..add SV 4110 to the register of Lost Cars.

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Q151-970
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Aug 28, 2008 6:25 am

..add SV 4110 to the register of Lost Cars.

Post by Q151-970 »

Ian,

You might want to add SV 4110 to the register of Lost Cars.

I bought the car as a wreck in the early 1960s and bits were used when 8159 was restored some ten or so years ago. I see from the genome that that it must have left the works after May 1931 (when your records show 4069 being despatched) and that it was a saloon. Nothing remained of the body when I found it.

The entry in the progress book recording it as a saloon suggests that it was exported fully bodied. The consequences are of this are interesting as Australian tariffs on car body imports had existed since 1907 or 1908 and were regularly added the post first world war years in an effort to protect "the Dominion's "infant industries" as Prime Minister Scullin termed them in 1929 when he doubled the existing tariff. The higher level of duty surely meant that this car would have been a more expensive option than the locally bodied cars. Are any members able to comment on why, and how many, fully bodied Minors were brought here?

Is someone also be able to tell me what the prefix "U" and subscript "A" means on the engine number.
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Ian Grace
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Re: ..add SV 4110 to the register of Lost Cars.

Post by Ian Grace »

Thanks for this Richard. I will add the car to the records.

Regarding the engine lettering, 'U' was an apparently arbitrary prefix letter for the Minor engines, but 'A' refers to tiny oversizes of a few thou for the standard pistons. Most engines are 'A', some are 'B' and I have seen at least one 'C'. Of course, once the engine has run a few thousand miles, these oversizes become irrelevant; they were simply used in the Coventry engine works to match new pistons to new blocks.

On the topic of engines, a couple of other points of interest that are indicated on your chassis plate. First, note that the chassis number is engraved, but the engine number is hand-stamped. Plates were batch manufactured and engraved with chassis numbers and issued in ascending order to chassis at the beginning of the production line. The engraved number was read from the plate (which was temporarily wired to the chassis before the scuttle was fitted) and the number hand stamped on to the front right chassis dumbiron. Further down the line, and engine was selected and fitted. The number stamped into the block was then hand-stamped on to the chassis plate (apart from the 'U' which was engraved), after which it could be screwed to the firewall.

Second, note that the engine number is considerably higher than the chassis number. Why? There are three reasons for this. First, while SV Minor chassis numbers began at 101, SV engine numbers began at 501 - and nobody knows why! But in this example, you'd expect chassis 4118 to be fitted with engine 4618, and not 4705. The slightly higher than expected number is for three reasons - first, a number of spare blocks were manufactured as spares, also some SV Minor engines were marinized and supplied to the boat trade, and finally it should be remembered that these engines were manufactured in Coventry by Morris Engines and shipped in large batches by lorry to Cowley, so by the time they reached the production like, they had become well mixed up in terms of engine numbers.

Interestingly, OHC Minor engines started, like the chassis, at engine number 101 and not 501 as in the case of the SV engine.

Ian
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