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MG TD TF 1500 - TD History

Hello,

I purshased a 2 owner 52 TD 2 years ago & have been waiting for info pertaining to the cars history. The 2nd owner had the car starting from 1956 and after his death the car was sold by his son to me. The sellers mother is getting old & it is difficult for him at this point, to sift through her records to find the meticulous notes the father kept about the car. I will get them as soon as he can get them from his mother.
Is there any other way to find out the history of this car?
Is there anyway to find out how she left the assembly line?
I know that you cannot obtain a BH cert on it.

I will be planning a restoration once my finances get a bit better but I am doing as much reading & learning as I can for now.

Thanks
Vinnie
Vinnie

Vinnie, you can got to the Original MGTD website and look up the factory production numbers. This will give you the month of production and a little guess-timating will give you the approximate day of the month your car rolled out. As for actual details of your car it should be pretty easy to determine the exterior/interior. A copy of Clausangers Original MGTD should then give you the timeline for the other details on the car so you can determine any changes which may have been made.
http://www.british-cars.org.uk/kimber/mgtd/index.html
Plenty of folks here who can help with other questions on the details -- and we all, always agree.
Welcome aboard,
Dennis
D F Sexton

Thanks. I have been to the site before but I guess I did not look hard enough. Tons of information. I have to go home & get the number off of the car to look it up.
Still need to contact the owner & see if he has found anything.
Vinnie
Vinnie

Vinnie,
Have my TD since July last year and I'm still reading and learning about it: restoration will start the moment my 1963 midget is finished. It's also made in 1952 and has the chassis number TD 19009 (engine number = XPAG/TD2/19352 and body number = 18361/92758). This was the most productive year in MG TD production with 10.838 being built. 9.009 went for export to the USA. Now if you use the production list on Chris Couper's splendid web site in an imaginative way you can quite accurately determine when your car was built. The year started with number 12578 and ended with chassis number 23644. If you divide 10838 by 264 (working days per year) you get approx. 41 cars built per day !!! If you know the chassis number of your own car its easy to figure out when it was built. With my car I came around the end of August. Definitive proof I got when I found an original label, stuck for 52 years between door panel and door frame, with the body number on it and a stamp reading "20 AUG 1952". Probably this was some label used in the upholstery department indicating that my red upholstery kit was to be placed in body number 92758. Shortly afterwards, this body was placed on a chassis on the Abingdon production line. What's also interesting is that if they made 41 cars per day this means that every fifteen minutes a TD rolled of the production line!!! (I think that a ten hour working day was normal then). Also interesting in Chris Couper's table is that between July 25th and August 11th of that year, no cars were made: the annual holliday or a shutdown of the production line for maintenance work ??
Good luck with the research on your apparently very original TD !!
Nick, 52TD/63Midget.
D.G.J. Herwegh

The informatoin I have gathered is this. Based on the math supplied by Dennis, my car was produced on 7/16/52.
I lokked up a 1952 calendar & I used excel to help me out.

Date First Last
15th. 18156 18196
16th. 18197 18237
17th. 18238 18278
18th. 18279 18319
19th. 18320 18360
20th. 18361 18401
21st. 18402 18442
22nd. 18443 18483
23rd. 18484 18524
24th. 18525 18565
25th. 18566 18606

The company closed from Friday July 25th. to Monday August 11th. for an annual holiday. I calculated backwards.

My 1952 TD is:
Chassis number 18213
Body number - 17533/91805
Engine number - 18505

I understand this is an approximation and I believe there is somewhere in England I can contact to find out more.

Vinnie
Vinnie

You can get info on TF's and newer.... however, someone decided that the earlier records for TD's and older were taking up too much room so they chucked them in the garbage "bin" one day.... arrrrgghhhhhhhhhhh
gordon lawson TD 27667

Thanks Vinnie for supplying a 1952 calendar. Now I know my car was built on a Wednesday. All very trivial I know, but it is interesting sideline information !!!
What puzzles me is the body number. The "low" number on your car gives a difference of 828 bodies with my car, and the "high" number gives a difference of 953 bodies ??? If you remember the label I've found: it seems they were using the high number for internal information. Contrary to what Clausager says in his book about the T-types. Hmmm, all very intriguing but I think it will remain a well kept TD mystery....
Nick, 52TD/63Midget
D.G.J. Herwegh

What is the difference between the high & low numbers. Why are they like this and why would they have used bodies in this wide of a difference to chassis number? Did they keep bodies lying around until a chassis was ready for it? Was it for combining them together as a certain interior/exterior color scheme until it was needed to give to a new owner

I do have all of the books except Clausager. I just missed one on ebay for $7. Rats!

BTW - I have a 69/71/72 Austin Healy MG Midget mash of parts/cars that I initially bought to restore and now I am not sure. I may still do it as practice for the TD resto. I plan on begining it again this summer.

Vinnie
Vinnie

Testing. I have been a member for some time & usually forget to login. I have been typing personal info in every time & shows I am a non member. I will see if this works now that I am logged on.V
V.W. Piña

The MG Car Club, Abingdon, England, hold all the car assembly date record books for virtually all MGs up to the last TF; only the Y (YA) and YT records are missing. They can be contacted at <JohnI@mgcc.co.uk>, and they make a charge for any search they undertake.
Roger Wilson

Don't know why they used TWO body numbers Vinnie. All I can add is that my 1963 Midget also has two different body numbers (on the left and right door pillar). Only ONE of them is in found in the factory records. So it seems common practice at that time, for a reason not known anymore??!! That there is a difference between body and chassis numbers has something to do with the popularity of certain colours (at least that's what I guess). Morris Bodies Branch delivered a batch of fully trimmed and painted bodies to the Abingdon assembly plant (probably in a numerical order) and there the most "wanted" colours were assembled first to complete cars??? This must be the reason that the numerical order in body numbers was lost and there is often a wide gap between body and chassis number. I suspect that the gap for a Silver Streak Grey TD (like mine and an unpopular colour at that time) is more wide than say a red or green car. Interesting to hear that the English MG Car Club CAN supply some sort of production trace. I also thought that the factory records were destroyed a long time ago.
Nick, 52TD/63Midget.
D.G.J. Herwegh

Nick.

I emailed John Inness as recommended. Here is his reply. I am waiting on a response to a few more questions I had. I will keep you Posted.
Vinnie

Vincent.

I the only information I can give you on your car is from the factory chassis log books. I can give you chassis number, original engine number and date of build. The format will in letter form on MGCC headed paper.

The fee for the letter is £ 15 inc postage.

If you want a letter, please email me your chassis number and credit card details. Please use 2 emails for the card details to prevent card fraud.

Regards
John Inness
MGCC

Don't forget to include your postal address
V.W. Piña

Chassis numbers were stamped at the start of the Abingdon asembly line and have no relation to body colour or body number. On the TF there is only one body number from where the bodies were assembled at the Morris bodies branch in Coventry. This number just keeps a count of the bodies and does not relate to the colour. Body numbers got a little mixed up during transport and stockpiling. Sorry I cant help with the double numbers on the TD.

Matthew
Matthew Magilton

Matthew, Vinnie,
For what it's worth: according to Clausager in "the Original T-types" on page 94, I quote;
".....Each car also had a body number plate, on the left-hand side of the bulkhead by the toolbox. This quoted the body-type number, the body number itself and the body BATCH NUMBER. No records of the TD body numbers exist and the numbers found on individual cars would be difficult to make sense of, without much further research. A typical body number plate reads as follows:
Body tyoe 22381
Body number 1373/49378
This particular plate is of an early 1950 car, and it is thought that the first set of figures in the lower line (1373) is the actual body number. The body type number 22381 may be common to all TD's...."

By the way, send you an email with TD/hardtop photo's Vinnie
Nick, 52TD/63Midget.
D.G.J. Herwegh

When we were restoring my TD we found inked numbers stamped on all the metal parts. These numbers roughly corresponded to the car number (within a couple hundred or so). Anyone know if these were part tracking numbers or exactly what they were for?
Bruce Cunha

I am sure this has been asked before but is there any way to find out any dealers of MG's from the 50's. As mentioned before, I have a 1952 MG TD that I recently purchased from the 2nd owner who had it from 1956. I am under the assumption that this was a California car from the get go. The PO's son sold me the car & he has yet to find his deceased fathers "meticulous" records. (I keep tabs on him.)

Is there a way to find out about exporters from the west coast?
Would the Cali DMV know of such info about the car?

V.W. Piña

How do I go about getting a copy or the Original MG T Series by Clausager?
Does anyone have a copy for sale?
Vinnie
V.W. Piña

This thread was discussed between 07/03/2005 and 21/03/2005

MG TD TF 1500 index

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