Patent Plate Minutiae

[Malcolm Parker]

Probably half of all the extant Austin 7's will have the incorrect patent plate?    It is not a matter over which I will be losing much sleep!  It has been an interesting exercise.

[Colin Morgan]

There are pictures of an original looking car on-line (283927) with the small plate. Another, 282127, looks to have been restored, which means the current small plate shown may not original. But there seem to be plenty of 1937 cars with the larger plate? - mine for one. From Wyatt, the chassis number had reached 281xxx at the beginning of 1938.

[JonE]

Colin - did the 283927 look like it was riveted? Indeed, are there other Rubies out there which are riveted? The construction may have changed by then.

[Colin Morgan]

Not sure. 


  1938 283927 Small Patent Plate.jpg (Size: 96.46 KB / Downloads: 330)

[Douglas Alderson]

Hugh, Austin may be able to provide a better image of this A7 patten plate.

https://austinharris.co.uk/photo/austin-...terior/691

[Hugh Barnes]

I am away on the eurotour at the moment and keeping up with this thread has proved impossible. I will
Return to it when I get home next week

[JonE]

Look in 'A new big 7' for Parazine's very original car and its plate. Both this and James Anderson's very original '37 Ruby (the one in Rinsey Mills) have screws securing, so there is clearly a threshold to be found somewhere, when they changed from rivets.

[Mick Hobday]

In the summer of 1967 I spent a satisfying afternoon in Don Rowarth's scrapfield in the Derbyshire Peak, removing various potentially useful small parts from the remains of the many 1930s Austins there. I managed to find several patents plates (I still have a couple), all secured with round head brass (possibly originally chrome or nickel plated) BA screws and nuts.  I have never seen an original unmolested car with the patents plate rivetted on, and I would be surprised if Austins ever used the rather unattractive rivets pictured in Jon's photos.

       

[JonE]

Mick - we have two of them with exactly same form... over plainly original dash paint, in cars with low use. And there is the comment referenced earlier in the thread (regarding rivets) that we could do with checking its source. So plainly we need to keep investigating, but it would help to document your memories of those cars i.e. those two above look mid 30s onwards. 'Rather unattractive' is a bit subjective for me - we just don't have enough evidence yet.

[JonE]

bad photo but undisturbed ARR Ruby 250xxx with large plate and obviously ?plated screws