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TR's v MG's a tale of tr owners being triumphant?

Posted: 16 Feb 2012 20:35
by trickyx12000
while looking through the " why are cars so de-valued etc topic "i saw (john 215) t shirt "i would rather push a triumph than drive a mg" ( john 215 can you please put it the picture on this topic)
made me recall the two hardest days work i ever did in the british motor industry..

i personally smashed everyone of the clocking in clocks from the abingdon MG factory.

for twenty years i worked at the longbridge car factory starting with an apprenticeship in 81. finishing managing the conveyor bridge over the bristol rd..the apprentice training involved placement moves round the factory over four years. in 84 i was placed in a department which repaired all the clockin in clocks in the midland BL factorys. one day i was asked to help move a load of old clocks from a store in the west works from an area that was going to be used to build 6R4 rally metro bodies and place them into anther store near the GOB.during this day i was told by the father and son team that repaired the clocks that they had seen grown men crying in the abingdon works when it closed as they removed the clocks. ( o and the son had one of the tr7 sprints... details to follow later ).
18 months later the father was up for retirement and mmmm this looked like a good job to me!!!what with no shift work.. so i made tracks to replace him. by 88 i was the owner of a tr7 and was told to remove the MG clocks from their current store, which was now required for a computer back up system for the GOB. as longbridge was still using clocking in for workers payment, management did not want the print wheels out of these clocks in the hands of the work force.
one sledge hammer and three roll on roll off skips were provided and way i went.. with people working passed with a " can i buy one" smash " sorry no"
by the end of the week i was so tried i fell a sleep on the way into town on friday night.

Posted: 16 Feb 2012 21:23
by jclay (RIP 2018)
Nice story.

You have got to learn to punctuate!

Clay

[url="http://web.me.com/jclaythompson/Site/Welcome.html"]My Triumph Site[/url], [url="http://web.me.com/jclaythompson/Technical"]Technical Stuff[/url], [url="https://public.me.com/jclaythompson"]My Public Folder[/url], [url="http://web.me.com/jclaythompson/tr8/Welcome.html"]My TR8 Site[/url]

Posted: 17 Feb 2012 03:00
by trickyx12000
punctuate!!!!! is that some thing you do with a fly press...
sorry finer points of the english langage are loss on me. which is why i spent twenty years in a car factory smashing clocks!

Posted: 17 Feb 2012 03:44
by Hasbeen
Trickyx, you're not telling us that the management & workers at Leyland didn't trust each other are you? I find that really hard to believe.

I guess they didn't like each other either, & that has quite a bit to do with why it failed.

Thanks for the glimpse of history.

Hasbeen

Posted: 17 Feb 2012 05:24
by john 215
Hi,

Great story [:)], took a coach load of MGF owner from our dealership round Longbridge to watch the MGF line, very intresting and a huge plant. Also visited the dealership technical help dept a couple time.

Have you ever seen this a walk around the closed factory a few years ago -

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/sho ... longbridge

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/sho ... longbridge

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/sho ... longbridge

Oh and my T Shirt-

Image


Cheers John

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Posted: 17 Feb 2012 15:34
by FI Spyder
Back in 2003/2004 I saw the reverse of that T-shirt "I'd rather push an MG...etc." on a club member so I made a few pro Triumph T-shirts which I presented to the club members on successive meetings. This turned into "Car of the month" now called "Merv's Mystery Car of the Month" wereby I give out the clues and they guess what it is. I then pass the poster of car specs/pictures around so they all can see. I did it to inject some interst into what can be a dry meeting. I've been doing it ever since. I've been told by some members it's the highlight of the meeting they look forward to.

Around the same time I also started a "technical" section of the meeting with such things as showing how a battery charger and washing soda can be used a rust removal machine. This was done intermittently as members came up with things they wanted to share. As of this year it is a regular second half of the meeting with a dedicated coordinator. The first hour is meeting ended with my mystery car of month, the second hour is technical, could be slide show, last night was overhauling a TR7 engine (slideshow with worn County bearings from a Dolomite sprint as hardware present).

All started by a pro MG T-shirt.[:p][:p]



- - - - TR7 Spider - - - - - - - - 1978 Spitfire - - - - - - 1976 Spitfire - - 1988 Tercel 4X4 - Kali on Integra - 1991 Integra - - Yellow TCT
Image

Posted: 17 Feb 2012 16:31
by trickyx12000
hi john 215.
looked at the links you put up.. the icon of " delict uk" was a mini clubman in a metalic brown an export model colour i think as i have never seen it here, it was stripped of all parts except a bit of wiring loom. it was in one of the under ground tunnels ( air raid tunnels that linked the whole works at one time) if my memory serves me correctly its in the one that runs from the railway track that goes from longbridge lane to groveley lane to the back of trentham building. muddy as hell it was in the tunnel by it but it was 15 years since i was in there, and last time i was there the locks on the tunnels was the old clocking in clocks from longbridge locks mmmm not that i would still have a key! the longbridge clocks nearly all had a great big steel hinged gates placed over the clock doors lock with a big yale lock as the clocking in fraud was massive at one time. there was so many tricks the work force would do just to gain that couple of extra minutes to clear the car parks.. like holding the punching handle down with their bag for a few minutes at the end of the shift and then releasing it and the tension that had built up would jump the print wheels ahead of the clock so gaining a few minutes at the end of the day.

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 15:23
by Dan B
FI Spyder,

What format do you use for the mystery car? Have you saved any and would you mind sharing? That sounds like something we could do in our club.

Thanks,

Dan B

Posted: 23 Feb 2012 19:50
by FI Spyder
For the posters I use Coreldraw but can export them to pdf. i'll email you some when I get a chance (on other computer). Hints are in rtf.

- - - - TR7 Spider - - - - - - - - 1978 Spitfire - - - - - - 1976 Spitfire - - 1988 Tercel 4X4 - Kali on Integra - 1991 Integra - - Yellow TCT
Image

Posted: 24 Feb 2012 10:46
by stevie_a
<font color="teal"><b>John they photos are fascinating </b> </font id="teal">

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Posted: 24 Feb 2012 18:17
by Dan B
Thanks!