Jimh Posted June 12, 2009 Share Posted June 12, 2009 It has been suggested elsewhere (GWT’s Dennis blog) that a book on restoring particular MVs might be a handy thing to have. It would help those who are already involved in a particular project and may encourage others to take the plunge. My own take on this is that the world is overflowing with books on everything you need to know to restore any MV which takes your fancy so there would be a great deal of overlap with a lot of other publications. However, in my experience the thing which stops a lot of people (of all abilities) taking on a project is detailed information about a particular make and model of vehicle. We’ve all stood looking at a wagon in a yard knowing next to nothing about it. You don't know the big stuff (has it got the right engine, should it really only be two wheel drive) and you don't know the little stuff (what numbers are to be stenciled where). It's often a leap of faith or just mindless optimism which says "I'll take it" and it's only when you get it home and start digging and speaking to people and looking at others you find you've been stitched up with a lemon that’s going to bankrupt you to restore or got a super rare thing for next to nothing. There are a number of books on the market which have been devoted to particular classic cars - Motorbooks International’s series of books devoted to the intimate details of Mini Coopers and Porsche 356s among others are good examples of these but these are easier where tens of thousands of each series has been built in factories. You can be confident enough to say that every Mini Cooper S should have a reinforcing plate on the rear bulkhead where the second fuel tank is fitted but not to say that every Scammell Explorer should have that label just there. These things are a lot more hand made and a lot less common to be able to state definitively what should be where. The significant modifications while in service and after demob muddy the waters even further. All you have is balance of probability. Look at lots of them and try to work it out for yourself. Trawling through photographs make it a lot easier to know what you are looking at (or not as the case may be) and are invaluable when you are trying to make, mend or replace something. The problem is that most pictures you find and most pictures people take are all taken a bit too far back when you want to know the hinge arrangement on a Militant’s door. No one is going to get wildly excited about it but when you want to know you’ve got something right or feel confident about taking a project on you need detail. The most useful stuff I’ve seen during our project was the half dozen pictures of Niels V’s unrestored Pioneer which answered a dozen questions that we’d got. Yes you can go poking round others but there is no substitute for volume of evidence. It’s not necessarily about originality – it is also about problem solving, work arounds and, dare I say it, improvements. Obviously there is a lot of that stuff already on the forum but this was about arranging it in a format with nice big pictures that you can refer to quickly before you weld that thing there. The problem with books is that they are limited by size and they cost a lot of money. A multi volume masterwork on the Scammell Pioneer is not going to excite much interest from publishers so an alternative approach is needed. I might also suggest that there aren’t that many people who are going to get excited about Martian brake servos. In these days of cheap photography and cheap storage perhaps the best way to help ourselves and others is to photograph the living daylights out of as many vehicles as possible and hold them all in a way which makes it easy for people to find them. One question is how to hold them. The pictures do need to be pretty large to allow them to be studied properly and were the archive to become large enough it would end up costing a wedge to hold them on a web server somewhere. There is also the matter that each vehicle is only likely to be of interest to a few people so having instant access to a large archive would be pretty pointless. Perhaps the best way to start is to have a register so people know who has an archive of which vehicle and what areas are covered. Archives could either be distributed on request using stone age CDRs or a little more cutting edge on P2P file sharing sites (there are plenty of free ones to use) or as torrents for those that got really big. How does that sound for a plan? I’ll start: JimH: Vehicle: 1945 Scammell Pioneer SV/2S Condition: Under restoration Areas covered: Pretty much everything Format: CDR, file sharing site or I can upload it to my own webserver for you to download I’ll add the GG when it (finally) arrives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gritineye Posted June 12, 2009 Share Posted June 12, 2009 Great idea Jim, perhaps a sticky thread on here with a index of members willing to take pictures of their vehicles on request, and links to any threads showing good pics would work. The key being able to find them easily. This way archives would build up slowly without too much effort, maybe each vehicle type having it's own album on HMVF. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snapper Posted June 12, 2009 Share Posted June 12, 2009 I think this is a great idea. I think there is as much interest in seeing the vehicles broken down into bits or in detail for anyone. I agree a set of volumes on one motor would have limited appeal. The idea behind the HMVF book I'd still like to produce when time allows was to give a general user guide to MVs rather than a pretty encyclopedia of no particular merit. I am actively taking the basis of the idea as regular items for The Pathfinder, so I hope to do all this and then in time bring it together, perhaps. I dunno. I'd appreciate ideas and opinions. I will support your project Jim. I have a MUTT to offer up (it's a bit muddy at the moment!). So lets's see how things spread with this.... MB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarryH57 Posted June 17, 2009 Share Posted June 17, 2009 A few points One disadvantage of typical PC based manuals is that they are not very user friendly when you are working on the vehicle unlike a Haynes manual that can easily be read on the job. A PC in your garage might help but printing out pages can be a bind unless the photos are very good quality. I'm sure we have all printed something only for it to look far less clear than on screen. It might be worth having an expert moderator for each vehicle type to update tips and for any info to be readily downloadable to personal PC's and not just live on the net, should people wish to refer to them when their own ISP is out of order or god for bid so is HMVF! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retriever Posted June 17, 2009 Share Posted June 17, 2009 good idea I am willing to photograph any of my vehicles, just one small point owners must point out any non original parts mods ect or we might have people thinking this is as it should be. 1938 Leyland Retriever 1939 Austin 10 1918 Douglas 1941 Matchless g3l 1944 Ariel w/ng 1956 Goddess Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john wheatley (R.I.P.) Posted June 17, 2009 Share Posted June 17, 2009 Hi Gang, If I can help anyone with a Morris 15cwt. then just say the word. Regards, John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormin Posted June 17, 2009 Share Posted June 17, 2009 I think the beginnings of a good reference are here in all the restoration blogs already, lots of great photographs. All right it may not be easy to find the exact bit you want like a paper manual but it would be hard work to make it such. Photographs are very space hungry one possibility would be for people to host them on their own web-site and linked from HMVF. I sense a problem for the mods on here if there is a huge photo archive to have to police. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marmite!! Posted June 17, 2009 Share Posted June 17, 2009 Members can always start a Vehicle specific thread with a Blog... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marmite!! Posted June 17, 2009 Share Posted June 17, 2009 I think the beginnings of a good reference are here in all the restoration blogs already, lots of great photographs. All right it may not be easy to find the exact bit you want like a paper manual but it would be hard work to make it such. Photographs are very space hungry one possibility would be for people to host them on their own web-site and linked from HMVF. I sense a problem for the mods on here if there is a huge photo archive to have to police. Yes there is an enormous amount of info already on the forum, all it takes is a simple search & usually you can find some relevant info. The forum has a very good search facilty which a lot of members don't seem to use... if you can't find what you are looking for then just ask the question, To save forum space members can alway use a photohoast like Photobucket Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Posted June 17, 2009 Share Posted June 17, 2009 I think this is one hell of an idea and we need to see what HMVF can do to provide such a database. It could will be a life saver for vehicles. How about of we had a GMC (no funny jokes thank you) and we had sections, for example... Brakes - then dump all brake images in there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nz2 Posted June 18, 2009 Share Posted June 18, 2009 A great idea of being able to access photos of particular vehicles from one point. However this has its limitations with eariler WW1 vehicles as there are so few of us rebuilding such old gear. Great War Truck has a running photo collection of the Dennis and now from Texas the FWD or is it a Nash/ Jefferis Quad. Searching for photos without wadding through other chatter can be tiresome. Perhaps a separate file for photos only operating parrallel to the main file with photos and comments Doug Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marmite!! Posted June 18, 2009 Share Posted June 18, 2009 Again... we do have the Members Albums that is not used fully, click Community, Pictures & Albums, New Album you can start a picture Blog & leave a link on the forum, from memory there's no limit on how many albums you have & I think you can post up to 100 photos in eac album. Albums and PicturesHow do I use albums? As a member, you can create Albums of images that are linked to your public profile. Albums can be created by visiting the User Control Panel, and clicking on the 'Pictures & Albums' link, and then clicking on 'Add Album'. Each album can have a title ('Joe's Holiday to Nepal'), a description ('A bunch of photos from my recent adventure') and can be of three different types: Public, Private or Profile. Public albums can be viewed by anyone Private albums can only be viewed by site staff (moderators, administrators) and your Friends and Contacts (info) How do I upload pictures? Once you've created an album you can upload images to it. Simply view the album and click on 'Upload Pictures'. You'll have the option to give each picture a caption, and to set one image as the Album cover, which will be displayed on the public profile. To delete an album or edit the title, description or album type, click on 'Edit Album'. To delete an image, or to edit a caption or change the album cover, click on 'Edit Pictures'. All members who have access to your album images can comment on them, in a similar way to Visitor Messages (more info). You can delete any image comments from your albums, and report inappropriate messages to moderators. When you have uploaded a picture, you can place it in your posts by using the BB code text that is displayed below the image when you view it at full size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimh Posted June 18, 2009 Author Share Posted June 18, 2009 Photographs are very space hungry one possibility would be for people to host them on their own web-site and linked from HMVF. I sense a problem for the mods on here if there is a huge photo archive to have to police. Indeed. To be of any use the pictures would need to be very big and if someone starts loading those onto someone else's server then someone somewhere is going to end up paying a lot of money for it. The other issue is that if they are all in one place then they can all be lost in a single crash. Not good. What was in my mind was just a register of who has got what. They can be stored and distributed on CD-R or through file sharing sites or torrents. It's a bit stone age but it is then just a matter of asking the appropriate person for the files. The benefit of this is that time goes on (and if people aren't too prissy about copyright) then over time there ends up with lots of people with archives for more than one vehicle. A Pioneer CD with loads of desperately tedious pictures of the wooden panel above the windscreen from lots of different vehicle would be a very good thing indeed. The more copies there are the less likely there would be something lost in a single crash. I agree that there is already a lot of good information here already but I don't think this would be replicating anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.