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Well, you found the needle in the haystack!
Hardtop 1/4 windows
- Thread starter steven
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Austin Healer
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I try to pass along resources as I find them! A lot of commonalities in British cars. It's a country the size of Oregon. Not like they can afford to make everything individual to each brand of car. Wilmot Breeden made most of the chrome and lock sets, GKN made all of the fasteners, a lot of suspension bits and frames for some cars. Lucas made the electrics and Smiths and Jaegar, gauges, heaters and more...
a lot of cross pollination..
a lot of cross pollination..
Austin Healer
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Ford too! Some time ago I rebuilt a couple of Lotus SCA engines designed for a Lola open wheel race car. Derived from a Ford engine... something like 10 of these engines survive. Lotus made it into a single overhead cam engine driven by 7 gears with no index markings. Oil pump (dry sump) and water pump were gear driven. No front balancer either. I had to set up a degree wheel on the back of the crank and read it backwards! No manuals for the engine, all I had was some magazine articles. I had to have Dave Bean Eng. in Cal. make me a couple of billet crankshafts as the ones supplied were long stroke "cheater" cranks.... I've worked on a lot of very interesting British stuff in the last 40 odd years!
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Not to rain on anyone's parade, but the Moss Motors buttons are similar but not the same. The big difference is in the washers. There are actually two rubber washers; a large one (25 mm) that goes on the button side of the glass and a smaller one (15 mm) that goes on the hinge side of the glass. Both washers have small shoulders that face each other when correctly installed. The ID of both washers is a little under 8 mm and the screw is a 10-32 x 1/4" Phillips pan head SS machine screw. I've tried to show as much detail in the pictures as possible.
Rick
Austin Healer
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There are TWO SIZES of the chrome buttons.. Mk1/Mk1a used a smaller chrome button than the Mk2. The Mk1/Mk1a button is 5/8" in diameter... (just shy of 16mm) the exact same dimension as the Mini. The Mk2 button is 1" in diameter... Just over 25mm. If you look at the hardtop that I supplied you with the Tiger that you just bought from me, you'll note is has the smaller buttons. From the Alpine parts list (page YX15, illustrations E273 and E276) The smaller buttons are part # 5240532 and the rubber washers are 5240531. The quantity of the rubber washers is listed as 4. This indicates that both the inner AND outer rugger grommets are the same size. In this case, 5/8"
I do agree that the Moss washers are incorrect as they supply a fibre washer instead of the proper rubber one. The 25mm rubber washer is only used with the 1" button as found on the Mk2 Tiger
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This is great information. It needs to be clear that it was not that some hardtops were sold to go on Mk 1/1A cars and others for Mk 2 cars. The hardtop was sold as a factory option as well as a dealer-installed option. The differences between the hardtops are based on when the hardtops were manufactured. If you got one from a dealer, it would be whatever the dealer had on hand, or whatever was in the pipeline if the dealer had to order it. So it would not be out of the question that a Mk 2 might get a hardtop with the smaller chrome buttons and vice versa, if a Sunbeam owner went back to the dealer for a hardtop for his Mk 1/Mk 1A or Series 3 or 4 Alpine. The dealer did not care which model you had when he plopped that hardtop onto your car.
Austin Healer
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I don't know if you have ever taken a hardtop to bits for restoration... I have done a bunch. Hardtops are numbered. There is a stamping in a couple of places, One of which is the flange for the rear window seal..., the other is the flange for the window seal on the left side door glass.
There are three different variants of the Alpine/Tiger hardtop. The 1st type for the series 3/4 Alpine and Mk1 Tiger is configured for the metal top covers, the 2nd type for the series 5 Alpine and Mk1A Tiger has little brackets pop riveted to the rear rail below the window for the straps for the vinyl top cover. The variant for Mk2 Tiger and very late series 5 Alpine has the 1' diameter buttons for the rear qtr window clamps.
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That is all good information, but the dealers would install whatever hardtop they had on hand if a customer wanted one. It did not matter to the dealer what model the Tiger was. The hardtops are not model specific. They vary depending on when the hardtop was manufactured, not depending on which model the dealer was installing it. The earlier hardtops were different from the later ones, but they could have been installed on Mk 2s if the dealer had one sitting around and the Mk 2 owner wanted a hardtop. It is not like the hardtops were installed on the cars as they went down the assembly line.
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It's probably worth noting the difference between factory ordered tops and dealer installed.
On GT Alpines the top was standard and colour matched to the body.. Same for the veey few GT Tigers.
If you ordered a Tiger rather than buy off the lot and ticked a hardtop with the car you either got stock black or could colour match.
All cars ordered with a top would have the correct top.
Buying a top from the dealer would be black as that was the standard finish on all optional tops.
When they updated to the vynil softtop covers(SV and mkIA/II) the tops needed the little brackets for the soft top cover straps. All cars with this body would need that top or a dealer if using an old top would have to fit the brackets.
There were 3 types of window buttons used.. Increasingly larger in an attempt to stop the fracturing of the side Windows.
There were also different corners pads and retaining plates and also 2 different hardtop to body rear and side seals.
I had a 1 owner tiger that was a late cross body car.. The owner bought it in late '65. He bought a hardtop from the dealer.. Its a sv/mkia top has the little metal brackets for the vynil cover
On GT Alpines the top was standard and colour matched to the body.. Same for the veey few GT Tigers.
If you ordered a Tiger rather than buy off the lot and ticked a hardtop with the car you either got stock black or could colour match.
All cars ordered with a top would have the correct top.
Buying a top from the dealer would be black as that was the standard finish on all optional tops.
When they updated to the vynil softtop covers(SV and mkIA/II) the tops needed the little brackets for the soft top cover straps. All cars with this body would need that top or a dealer if using an old top would have to fit the brackets.
There were 3 types of window buttons used.. Increasingly larger in an attempt to stop the fracturing of the side Windows.
There were also different corners pads and retaining plates and also 2 different hardtop to body rear and side seals.
I had a 1 owner tiger that was a late cross body car.. The owner bought it in late '65. He bought a hardtop from the dealer.. Its a sv/mkia top has the little metal brackets for the vynil cover
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Yup.. The Series MKIA/II soft top cover strap brackets
Austin Healer
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I imagine that I would have been pretty frustrated if I bought a mk1a or a mk2 and found that there was no way to properly attach the straps for the top cover to the hardtop...
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FYI, The world was different in the 60's. I don't want anyone to take offense to this but I guess it takes someone like myself that was a teenager in the late 60's and was buying parts not stocked by regular auto parts stores from places such as George Byer's or Trainor motors in Columbus in order to keep my Alpine on the road. Byer's was the midwest distributor for Chrysler / Rootes and if you needed something for a car they sold you what they had in stock that would fit. Dealers were at the mercy of the parts warehouse. NOS fenders at the time were generic without openings for the turn signals. Some of those are still floating around. In March of 1970 I bought a new front valance for an earlier Alpine and they gave me one with the brackets for the series 5 oil cooler. They sold what was available and would fit. It's possible that if you bought a hard top for a car based on a series 5 body and they came up with one for a series 3 or series 4 Alpine it wouldn't have been a problem to come up with the small brackets for the straps. Guys in the shop in those years were not just techs. Byers was also known to switch interiors around if a buyer wanted a car with a different color interior. I know of a local Mid night blue Alpine with Azure blue interior that Byers sold new but the buyer wanted a black interior. It left the dealer with the black interior. That car was totaled a few years later after becoming what is now called an Alger. Things were different since the cars were just another car of the time.
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I was just looking at a couple of my parts books and they list part numbers for body shells. Non GT bodies carried the # 2239543 and GT's carried #2239544. It would be interesting to know the time frame and cost to get a shell if they were available.
Warren
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Yeah the dealership would install as an option what was in stock. It does seem plausible that a car that languished on the lot could get a later hardtop. From every account that time was considerable.
As for the rubber stock pick up some flat sheet and cut your own. It's more likely that the tops are surfed around and I've seen a Lord Rootes winner hard top no soft top at all. I'm sure guys like Dale Sean etc can add the hold up brackets or take them away if needed.
All the numbers are only to be seen in a bare shell condition.
As for the rubber stock pick up some flat sheet and cut your own. It's more likely that the tops are surfed around and I've seen a Lord Rootes winner hard top no soft top at all. I'm sure guys like Dale Sean etc can add the hold up brackets or take them away if needed.
All the numbers are only to be seen in a bare shell condition.