Research Findings and Discussion

at the beach

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Personally, I'm mainly interested in the Archive's Alpine and Tiger related holdings. The vast majority of these which have been located are contained on the Aperture Cards (microfiche).



In 2012 I was part of a team from the STOA and CAT that spent a week working at the Archive in Banbury. We located perhaps a hundred Tiger related drawings on velum that had previously been misfiled, but very few others. Those were about the extent of our success finding "paper". However thousands of Alpine and Tiger drawings have been located on the Aperture Cards. And those seem to just be the tip of the iceberg.


It's impossible to learn much about a drawing just by looking at those IBM punch cards. However once a drawing is scanned and digitized it can be emailed and inspected anywhere in the world. Before serious research can be done, we have to scan the cards. Nearly 16,000 have been scanned so far with probably another ten-thousand still to go. Once those are done, we think we'll have digitized most all of the Alpine and Tiger drawings in the Archive collection.



Graham Vickery in the UK has analyzed and cataloged about a thousand of the scanned drawings. Between scanning and cataloging there remains a lot of preliminary work awaiting any volunteers who want to pitch in.


In the meantime, Tom Hall in the SF bay area has started working with what has been cataloged by Graham and has already come to many significant conclusions. Tom has been able to find documentation in the drawings confirming many deductions and assumptions about the building process.


Other Rootes models have already used Archive drawings to replicate parts that were no longer available. The Alpine club in the UK has built and is selling rear leaf springs made from factory drawings. Tiger rear fender Rootes badges have been reproduced from an Archive drawing.

Below are some random Alpine and Tiger related drawings. (Forum size limitations require that they are displayed at less than a tenth their actual resolution, but they still give a general idea of the scope of the collection.)

bt
 

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michael-king

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Buck,

Fascinating and important research and documents.

The ability to.understand the process and also acess to drawings will prove invalauble. Some of us with 3d computing skills in rhino, catia, solidworks should start to model the various parts and assist with creating files for small batch 3d printing for thungs like small non structural cast parts and plastics.

The abilty to get accurate sunbeam parts just got a whole lot more comprehensive :p
 

HRS121E

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Buck

Great to see your very welcome publicizing and promotion of the Rootes Archive Centre Trust (soon to be restyled 'Rootes Heritage') telling the West Coast Tiger world what we are doing at Wroxton in Banbury, England.

As you know, right now the 4 trustees local to the Centre (7 of us in all) are working all the hours they can give to fitting out the new unit - power, partitioning etc, pretty much everything to commision the bare shell!!

If I may just add to something you said and Michael touched on. A growing number of parts have been reproduced over here (and further afield) with the direct assistance of the original engineering drawing. Also we are finding the 'art' aspects of drawings are in demand to ensure the the appearance of the outcome matches the original item. A example of this is one of the 'Talbot dog' badges. Providing the producer with a drawing along with the original item allowed the design image to be precisely copied.

Drawing example attached. Will post some Tiger and Alpine specific examples another time.

GV
 

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Andy - RACT Trustee

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Archive Drawings

Michael

As a RACT Trustee it's great that you have the 3D printing skills and I am sure you can be a great help to the Rootes communities using many of the of the 300,000 drawings we hold in the Archive.

The drawings have already been put to good use by many of the UK clubs and I know the Imp club have produced exhaust silencers for two models and we have just supplied some gear drawings to Quaife so that they can manufacture a batch of rally gears to the exact spec. They also made a water pump.

Many different window rubbers have been produced using the original drawings which has given far greater accuracy than the previous method of reverse engineering and helped keep the UK winter rain out!!

There are many other parts that have been produced but the introduction of 3D printing means other parts could easily been reproduced and in low production runs.

Great news for everyone and thanks for your support.
 

HRS121E

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To understand better the types of drawing found in the Rootes Heritage collections here are a few examples:

- (R) 1224 634 = A Rootes Group drawing.. 'Arrangement of Fuel Pump Assy'. Drawing still uses Alpine 260 as the model description.
- (PS) 2222 950 = Pressed Steel Co...'Trim Pad Complete Assy - Door'. The senior drawing of several others making up the door pad.
- (E) 1236 228 = External Supplier drawing ... Tudor '50cl Container Windscreen Washer'. Useful today for establishing originality.
- (P) 1236 192 = Prototype drawing dated 8th Feb 1966.... 'Installation- Handbrake Warning Light Switch' (Tiger II). A curiosity of what was fitted in the build of several pre-production MKIIs but cancelled!!

So Rootes freely used drawings made by the draftsmen of the design offices of Pressed Steel Co and external suppliers such as Tudor Accessories.


-----------------------
GV
Rootes Heritage
Banbury, England
 

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at the beach

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Bolts

It's safe to say owners are caring much more recently about originality than they have in the past. Some go as far as retaining the original fasteners such as the nuts and bolts and some insist on keeping the original finish. I was curious about how the UK bolts compare to what we have available today.

Here in the US we can tell the minimum strength of a bolt by its number "Grade". Rootes specified the minimum strength of a bolt with a letter. This chart shows their minimum strengths in PSI.

60K US Grade 2
90K UK "R"
100K UK "S"
110K UK "T"
120K US Grade 5
150K US Grade 8
180K US Grade 9

(US source McMaster Carr, UK source Rootes Engineering Standards volume from the Rootes Archive in Wroxon)


Buck
 

at the beach

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More on Tiger Bolts -the Code

Most Rootes part numbers were simply assigned sequentially. Usually when a new part was drawn, it received the next number in sequence. This Rootes drawing number eventually became the Rootes part number for that item.

In the Tiger parts list, a steering column by bolt used near the U-joint had a part number of 19105143. The parts list describes it as a “Screw, 5/16” UNF x 1-3/4” Hex”.


Thanks to research by the Trustees at the Rootes Archive, I learned that the Rootes part number for bolts is actually a code that breaks the number into 5 pieces. In this case 19105143 separates into 19 1 05 14 3


19 is the code for a hex head bolt.
1 tells us its thread is UNF
05 is the diameter in sixteenths of an inch. = 5/16” diameter
14 is the bolt’s length in eighths. = 14/8 = 1-3/4”
3 The final digit tells us the strength of the fastener as well as its finish. “3” tells us it was a “T” strength (110K psi) with a “28” finish. (Other research shows that Rootes’ “28” finish was a “heavy Phosphate - oiled” treatment.)

(the half dozen pages in Rootes Engineering Standards summarizing the code descriptions do not contain a mentioned of a "carburized" finish.)

(A "black oxide" finish carries a different code, "32L")

This information is contained in an volume preserved at the Rootes Archive entitled “Rootes Engineeering Standards”.

Buck
 

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