To shrink or bolt, that is the question.
Periodically, queries of why a certain procedure was / was not adopted by
Standard-Triumph appears on this list and it makes me wish I had taken more
care of the Quality Control and Inspection reports written by Dad over a
twenty year period post-war of the production problems he encountered in the
corresponding period to which this thread refers. I still have quite a lot
of them, written in pencil in his spidery handwriting that were later typed
up by his secretary - but sadly, by no means all.
The bottom line in why certain processes were maintained, when today we may
use other (better?) processes that results in even longer reliability and
improved build quality, all boils down to unit production cost. In other
words, you do everything possible to wind down your engineering and build
processes to a cost level that meets specific cost targets while at the same
time creating a product that will sell profitably and reasonably reliably
perform for a given forward period of time.
In those days - and still, today - at no time in that overall planning and
manufacturing process do you give a moments thought to a small group of
people fifty years into the future who will try to argue the toss between
current engineering practise and that which occurs or is an accepted norm
fifty years later. They are an irrelevance.
All of us, as enthusiasts, are enjoying cars that have undergone a miracle
in that they have lasted far, far longer than they were ever originally
designed or expected to do. That has not happened because the engineering
was sound but is simply a twist of fate. Too often, we entirely overlook the
fact our cherished old cars were built to a price with a maximum life
expectancy of ten years at the most, yet today, thirty, forty, fifty or more
years down the track, a surprisingly large number are still running. No
manufacturer of any mass-produced product is going to design a product that
lasts almost indefinitely because to do so will (a) put him out of business,
and (b) exponentially increase the manufacturing cost to a level that the
product is no longer price and value competitive in the marketplace.
So where does that put starter ring gears - or anything else for that
matter? A properly shrunk ring gear would perform without problem and
without bolting to the flywheel - so why bother to bolt it on as it only
increases unit and tooling cost. But as we know, some ring gears did slip -
but the number of those that did in comparison to those that didn't was
probably calculated as being a statistically acceptable failure rate. But as
power and torque of starters increased, friction co-efficients tended to
decrease and so the initiative was to continue using a friction fit ring
gear but to modify the starter dog to pull forwards on to the ring rather
than push it away from the flywheel. On my own 2000, I had ring gear slip
with a pre-engaged starter but its now rock solid as I put a number of tiny
tack welds around it before re-fitting.
Within this particular thread, we have to accept that Standard-Triumph, like
all the others, preferred to err towards compromise rather than a major
re-design - but at no time in those procedures did the company ever give a
moments thought to the queries that would be raised about those decisions
many decades later. Just accept it for what it is and try not to cloud the
issue with rocket science or supplant current state-of-the-art methods on
what is to all intents and purposes, low cost engineering for a limited life
span - because that is what it really was.
Jonmac
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