On Fri. 7Jun mburdick wrote:(in reply to a thread about wood or metal dashes
in TR4's)
> I have two '64TR4's and both have wood dashes... <
Mike, those original dashes can be restored cheaply, easily, and very nicely
to original condition.
> They both also have ZS [Zenith -Stromberg] carbs <
Mike, Right - they did change the TR4 carbs from SU's to ZS's somewhere in
'63 or '64.
BUT the best bet when talking about TR4's is to gear the discussion to the
Commission numbers as well as the year. From my research over the years it
appears that when Triumph made a change at a certain Commission Number (with
the TR4's), they pretty much stuck to that change until/or unless they made
another change to the same part. And curiously enough - most of the changes
were documented.
One example of this is the seats. There were three kinds (early - like the
TR3's; middle - quite different in shape; and late - which had the same
shape but a different pattern) across the 42 someodd thousand total number of
TR4's built. Bill Piggott's book does a pretty good job of documenting when
the seats changed.
Again - the commission numbers really tell the story about when the car was
made and what was "standard" equipment and what was available as "optional"
equipment. The title could be wrong -e.g. if a dealer had a car in stock
over the New Year or had received a car in Jan that had been built in Nov or
Dec of the year before. I picked my car up at Coventry in Jun '64 but my
Brit Heritage microfilm record (there was a thread on that recently) shows
the car as having been built in April or May '64(don't have the record here
right now).
BTW - the Brit Heritage record is really good. It even shows what optional
equipment I ordered and they supplied (Michelin X tires was one item I paid
extra for - $100 US for a set of 5!! Ha. Try that today -- 'course my pay
was $222.30 per month, 2Lt USA, so that was half a month's pay)
TR4 (or 2-6) owners who are into originality or history (and those are only 2
parts of what is interesting about our cars) will find Bill Piggott's book
invaluable as well as enjoyable reading.
Sorry to be so long winded but it is not too often that TR4's are in the
limelight on this page. And I do enjoy reading about the other Triumphs.
They're ALL neat.
Cheers all
Art Kelly 64TR4 (CT33118L) Original owner /daily driver
|