Jay Wassall wrote about the possibility of his engine TS43295E
being original to his 1959 TR3A TS42661L. It sounds about right.
I know at least 277 early TR engines were sold to Swallow for
the Doretti's retaining their Triumph serial numbers. Dorettis
had the engine number stamped on their commission plate along
with their commission number. Mine is commission no. 1030
(31st car built) with engine no. TS454E (long gone). As a matter
of fact, engine TS1E was fitted to a Doretti! Triumph was also
selling TR engines to Morgan for the Plus 4 and to Peerless
for the Peerless/Warwick GT although most of thos were built later
than 1959, I believe. I've never heard if Triumph kept a stock of
spare replacement engines or if they supplied replacement engines
on an on demand basis.
TeriAnn Wakeman also related a story of a car built up from various
parts which was subsequently registered against the engine number
by a new owner to give it a cache of originality. Interestingly
enough, my early cars, 54 TR2, 57 TR3, and 54 Swallow Doretti, are
all registered against their engine numbers! Apparently, this is
the way they did business in Calif. back then! I've never gotten
a good explanation of this from anyone or when exactly they stopped
the practice. This all became very interesting when I had to have
teh cars which are all non-op, "verified" by a police officer in
order to get them back into the DMV computer. I was ready with
detailed explanations and copies of my Heritage certificates. The
very nice lady officer basically viewed each pile-o-parts, asked
"Which one is this?" and signed off the form. Whew!
And to further confuse the whole matter, the Heriatge form for my
TR2 lists an engine number EARLIER than the commission number!
However, my registration and pink slip as well as all other
documentation list an engine number later than teh commission by
approx. 200 which jives with the difference in numbers on other
TR2s close in number to mine. I wouldn't worry about this except
that this car came with an engine block whose number matched the
number on the registration etc. I think Heritage misread their
microfilm! I related this to Bill Piggott and he said that the
microfilm copy held by heritage is a bit dicy in places but that
the Triumph Register in the UK has a original factory copy of the
build records and that I can have them verify the Heritage info.
Back in high school I took a placement test that rated skills in
different areas. In the accounting section I scored an 8 on a scale
of 100. No wonder all this number stuff drives me nuts!
Cheers,
Kurt Oblinger
Redondo Beach, Ca.
c394829@is6.mdc.com
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