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Oz34
United Kingdom
2538 Posts |
 Posted - 29/06/2010 : 16:19:34
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I've just found nearly 4 pages of FOOLSCAP which bring tears to my eyes. It's annonymous but I guess is probably from the Bones & is undated, but is in £.s.d. A flavour:
I reckon at about this time I was taking home about £80 a month, nearly 3 K Type engines! How many PARTS of a K engine would today's equivalent salary buy?
Happy days ( & why didn't I buy it all then?),
Dave |
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Onno
Netherlands
1044 Posts |
Posted - 29/06/2010 : 16:38:42
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Boy with those prices i'd have that dreamed L2 yesterday!
I think my complete months salary might buy me a steel crankshaft, maybe a few rods to.
Better get a chasis first.... |
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George Eagle
United Kingdom
3237 Posts |
Posted - 29/06/2010 : 18:59:31
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It would be interesting to know when these prices date from!
I bought my first P type for £50 in about 1960/61, and I know of one current owner of an L2 who purchased it for £7.10.0!!!
Happy days
George
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Oz34
United Kingdom
2538 Posts |
Posted - 29/06/2010 : 20:10:49
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Lucky L2 guy George; he got an L2 gearbox with a free car thrown in!
Dave |
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David Allison
United Kingdom
665 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2010 : 13:55:01
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Could be Barry Bone but probably also likely to be Richardsons.
They certainly bought a lot of the "scrap" from the works after the war and Dad bought a spare engine and gearbox for the NA for about £ 20.00 in 1962 from Richardsons.
He actually bought the car there too also with a bundle of spares and the place was a real goldmine of pre-war machinery and scrap metal.
Funny thing is that what my Dad threw away as scrap 30 years ago is now re-surfacing at auto jumbles as expensive spare parts and Stan Richardson was saying the same thing in 1961.
Regards David |
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McEvoy
United Kingdom
252 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2010 : 16:58:18
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David's mention of Richardsons reminds me of the only time I visited to look for anything R type, without success but received a nip from their German Shepherd - I guess I should have bought something!
Dave (Oz34) keep your eyes watering when I tell you that in 1957 I bought a complete Zoller supercharger inc. mounting plate, oil metering pump and outlet manifold all ex QA0255 for £3.00 and Bill Moss bought an R Type as a box of bits for £40.
Good point David makes about scrap resurfacing many years later as expensive spare parts, something that is making the alternative new, better material modern part a more viable financial alternative.
Bob |
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Oz34
United Kingdom
2538 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2010 : 19:15:16
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David,
I never had a price list from Richardsons. I don't remember getting it from the Bones, but I did buy things from them, (unfortunately no £28 K3 engines) so I'm pretty certain that's where it came from; 12 inch brake drums from 15 shillings....although your Zoller makes that look rather expensive Bob! It was a little later. I had nothing to do with MMM before '66.
Cheers,
Dave |
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George Eagle
United Kingdom
3237 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2010 : 20:07:45
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I purchased my P type from Richardsons - what an Aladdin's cave the place was. They had the ex Hamilton J4 in pieces but would not sell for a long time. It was eventually purchased by Colin Tieche. I can recall when the rebuilt car was first raced at Silverstone, the rebuild and the performance certainly set the standard along with the J4 of the late Georr Coles' J4.
I also recall the alsation but was not bitten!
The dogs appeared in the Richardons' adverts in the Motor Sport as I recall.
Regards George |
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JMH
United Kingdom
911 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2010 : 20:42:24
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Pay good money for mmm bits? There was a time when they gave them away. Did you hear the one about a J2 owner who walked into a pub? The landlord asked him "Is that your car out the front?" "Yes" he replied (a tad worried he was about to get an earbashing about the pool of oil beneath said 1930s relic). Good says the barman, D'you want to take the one from roud the back left here last month?"
Happy days, fast forward a generation & much the same thing hapened to me when I went to a party with one mini cooper & went home the following morning with a second on a tow rope you wouldn't be gifted one of those now either.
Happy days...
JH |
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Oz34
United Kingdom
2538 Posts |
Posted - 02/07/2010 : 23:07:32
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I had to leave mine on the lawn behind a very rural Suffolk pub in the '60s when I couldn't afford £5 for a "new" diff. Fortunately although a local farmer tried to persuade the landlord I wouldn't come back he didn't give in. Awful furrows I plowed as I climbed up the waterlogged grass when I came to leave but Sedge didn't seem to mind.
.....it ain't what it used to be!
Dave |
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bahnisch
Australia
674 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2010 : 00:39:50
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| I bought a few things from Richardsons in the sixties and again in the eighties but by that time the stuff had been pretty-well "picked over". Again in the sixties I stopped at a service station in England where the owner had a D-type tourer which he offered to me for nothing! Unfortunately I had no way of getting it back to Oz! I had already been offered a number of cars for free (including a couple of veterans) in Europe but had to decline for similar reasons! |
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Jon Marsh
United Kingdom
49 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2010 : 08:05:19
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I find this thread about Richardsons of considerable interest. In the early 1960s we all ran old MGs, T types, as the OHC cars were too much trouble, what with the oil over the dynamo and as others have said, you could hardly give them away. We were given an old derelict P type for nothing, but that’s another story. We use to drive the T types over to Richardsons from Mill Hill, as I recall it, just for a run out. Not sure we ever bought much, but I took some photographs of the lines of cars in the open barns, much like the Motor Sport advert. When did Richardsons finally close down does anyone know, there were still there in the early 1980s. We also went to Elnathan Mews, near Maida Vale, where there were a couple of mews garages stacked high with bits, mainly for T types as I recall. I think they advertised in Exchange and Mart. I sold the owner a scrap TC I was had for spares after I had taken the engine out. The Elnathan Mews business was eventually bought by my best man Steve Binnie, who ran it for a year or so, and lived in the flat above, before going to Suffolk to become a thatcher!
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tonym
United Kingdom
653 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2010 : 16:45:12
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Lost the top off the carbutrettor dashpot [in the eighties, I think]
Went down to Appleyards in Leeds to see if I could get another - as one did in those days.
Wots it off ,mate? said guy behind counter - pre way MG, says I.
Interesting, he said - we have just found a new engine for one of them in the back of the stores - are you interested.
What's it for says I and how much.
Off he goes to consult - comes back a little later - its a J2, mate and they want £200 for it.
Nah, forget it says I - I have an M-type - its no use to me.
Silly boy, with another 30 years of knowledge and the current problems I have with engines - it would have been one of the bargains of the last century.
Another time a pal at work tells me that they have found a pre-war MG saloon abandoned on a farm - and the farmer wants rid.
This was also in the 80's - amazing luck! - at that time the number of known saloons was virtually zero. So I showed him the old wall poster with all the MG models on. Which one do you think it is??
He goes unerringly to the Y type - ****** - no use to me, then.
I did manage to secure it for 50p for a local Y type nut
Ah, they were the days. |
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bahnisch
Australia
674 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2010 : 13:15:20
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| Richardsons must have kept going until at least the 1990's because I bought some MGB stuff from them in about 1996(?). There was some prospect of them closing down, the story was that this was due to widening of the M25 or else some other road (M25 access?) was going to go through the property, I think. They still had some ohc MG stuff but most of it had suffered from long exposure to the elements. |
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Oz34
United Kingdom
2538 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2010 : 16:48:21
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Can anyone confirm the old legend that Richardsons Staines branch had to move because of the building of one of the big reservoirs & left loads of MMM & T type stuff on the old site? The story I heard was that a small group heard at the last minute & hired a lorry for the weekend & just took what they could get on it. Even if untrue,it makes a good story of the old days.
Dave |
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tholden
United Kingdom
1638 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2010 : 17:41:10
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Barry/Dave. I think you will find that the cars and spares that remained when Richardsons closed were purchased by the trade. I think the cars went to that MGA dealer/restorer in the NE.
The building is still there and ironically is occupied by another company called Richardsons who are, I think, roofing contractors and unconnected with the previous occupiers.
I cant remember exactly when they closed Barry but would have thought it was earler than 96. When I last visited before they closed there was still a few rough old parts kicking around and half buried in the mud but most of the reasonable parts in the building had gone.
TH |
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