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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - dynamo starter paint

what is the correct colour for the startermotor and dynamo for an early sprite ?
awe rijt

nobody knows if they are engine colour or black?
on internet pictures i see both

awe rijt

I would say they were originally engine colour.
Dave O'Neill2

On my 61 Sprite Mark II, they were black. Purchased in 68, I was the second owner and believe the parts to have been original.

Les
Les Bengtson

They were normally painted engine colour, after total assembly. Service parts were black. If there were a problem at any point after the engine was assembled and painted, the replacements would have been dull black, even on a new car.

There was often evidence that paint had been touched up at some later stage. It was fairly common for various parts that normally got painted (or oversprayed!) to sometimes show up without paint. Sometimes sparkplugs got painted, but usually not - used to get a lot of MGB with red plugs below the wire boots. Sometimes generators/starters were painted all around, and sometimes the undersides were still black; sometimes the cable connections had been painted after connection. Some engines appeared to have been painted without manifolds, while others had overspray on the manifolds and bare spots behind them; MGB were painted with manifolds, but we got some that clearly had been painted without - it is very obvious when you do a lot of the same unmolested car. Etc. Etc, Etc.

An important point here, often missed by restorers, is that ground points must be bare - starter to engine, generator/alt to brackets, brackets to engine, eng/gbx to earth straps, etc. Painting before assembly causes all sorts of vexing electrical troubles, which get worse according to the quality of the paint and the compulsiveness with which the parts are painted before assembly.

FRM
FR Millmore

excellent post FRM

did you also see cars that had out of sequence (or different to rest of the day's/week's/ month's production run) parts or components fitted?

I can't wait for the next concours event, I'm going to badger about lack of overspray :)
Nigel Atkins

We were an independent shop, with the majority of our customers coming from a large but incompetent/fraudulent dealer in the area. So, production sequence was not an easy thing. Sometimes we'd see something once, then it would show up in production after a year or so. Plus, I never cared about concoursey things.

Weirdest thing ever was the first 1275 Sprite I saw. Boss went to pick up lunch and came back and told me to hustle up to the sandwich shop, because this strange new Sprite was there. We both went back and met the owner who let us crawl around it. We had known it was coming, and knew that the new engine had a solid side block - but this one had a Cooper S 1275 block with tappet side covers!

FRM
FR Millmore

great stuff

I don't mind the concours lot until they start telling your what would/should have been on the car rather than how it actually rolled out of the dealers

if you seen these stories before just skip by them

a mate collected his father's special Mini from the factory sometime in the late '60s years later when he went to a show in it, to cut a long story short, he begrudingly left it with the Mini lot for judging to come back to be told it wasn't entirely original otherwise it would have scored higher, it was as he'd collected it from the factory

I sold a car to an enthusiast that had a rare and quite valuable dash but the dash trim was the "wrong" colour despite all evidence that the car was as it was bought brand new being a one owner car - he wanted the car because it was so original but just had to change the dash trim to the "correct" colour

Nigel Atkins

thanks for the info, so im going to paint those parts black. or else it looks like a tractor engine (with everything painted green!!)
awe rijt

Better yet, the engine colour ones had the aluminum end plates painted more or less completely. The Lucas replacements usually had the end plates bare, since the case was painted black before assembly. Some Lucas parts were supplied as "Rebuilt", and then were sprayed after assembly, so they had black paint or overspray on the end plates.

Lucas "Rebuilt" parts were frequently new in actuality; this was a way to sell new parts at competitive prices, and to keep cores off the market. There was a lot of trouble with the first alternators, and random rebuilders were making awful repairs, which depreciated
Lucas' rep, a thing they hardly needed, given that alternators were failing on nearly new cars. Around 1966, Jag alternators were around $250 new, so the rebuilders charged $100, and many of these units failed. Lucas started supplying "Lucas Rebuilt" units for under $50 exchange with a %250 core charge, which took all the cores off the market. Plus, Lucas got the failed units back to study, until they figured out how to make them live.

FRM
FR Millmore

This thread was discussed between 13/03/2012 and 14/03/2012

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