From: IAN MOORCRAFT(UK)[email protected]
Date: 09 Jun 2002
Time: 02:06:57
Remote Name: 213.123.66.188
Regular readers of this page will know that often certain books are mentioned as a source of information to help the novice with various problems they may have with their restorations, I thought it worth a mention here that as useful as they are in general terms, you should not regard everything you see or read as necessarily correct, if for example you were going to shell out a considerable amount of money on a new hood and you used page 21 in "the Original Austin Seven" as your only source of information you would get a nasty surprise when your car was lined up with a row of similar models only to realise that you shouldn't have all the "Lift-a-Dot" fasteners across the back as depicted on the 27 AD tourer , the author does however say that the rear window is incorrect! It also has "Hiadem" beading across the front with metal end caps, again wrong. The best thing is to collect as much detail from as many different people as possible, try to pick out the original period pictures of your model from the many publications available, join a club, go to rally's, and most of all talk to owners, what ever your problem, we have been there before and are only to glad to save you from learning the hard way as most of us did. Just to finish on the point of hoods don't do as I did many years ago and make patterns off of another car , it wont fit. Please don't get the impression that I am condemning the Mills book in particular, as it is an excellent book that every owner should try to have on their bookshelf, most of the other "Bibles" can be "nit-picked", but we are indeed lucky that all of the various authors have spent so much of their time to provide us with so much enjoyment . Regards Ian