Dave Phillips recalls the days when Silver Threads and Golden Needles referred to USF fixings and carburettor inner workings
ONE of my favourite motoring writers is Richard Hall and his Norfolk Garage writings and blog (https://www.glencoyne.co.uk/contact.htm). It’s the musings of a traditional Land Rover mechanic working on uncomplicated classic vehicles and it’s always both entertaining and informative. I never read it without learning something new about my favourite vehicles and how they work.
But even Richard gets things wrong. one month he wrote: “Series axles are all descended from the original 1948 Series I, and right up to the end of Series production they were assembled with British Standard Fine (BSF) fasteners, a thread type now long-obsolete and largely forgotten.”
Something fishy
Forgotten everywhere except in angling, that is. Even today, 3/8” BSF is the standard thread used by the fishing tackle industry for bank-sticks, landing net attachments, bite alarms and all the other bankside kit that requires assembling and disassembling. It’s a reminder of the days when the Birmingham area (more specifically, Redditch) was the centre of the UK’s fishing tackle industry, mainly because that’s where the world’s finest fish hooks were made (as a by-product of the sewing needles industry).
The idiosyncratic use of an otherwise obsolete thread in a very specialised field is obviously an anachronism, but there’s no harm in that. The dictionary definition of “anachronism” is “something that belongs of seems to belong to another time”, which applies so much to the West Midlands, which was once the workshop of the world. Brum’s metal-making tradition dates back to before the advent of the internal combustion engine, but reached its zenith in the 20th century with a host of advanced and world-beating cars and motorbikes. It’s also where Land Rovers were invented and built, of course. We used to call them “Solihull’s Finest” – and meant what we said.
Decline
The decline of those industries has occurred in my lifetime. But the decline of the West Midlands as the place to build Land Rovers is much more recent. The Solihull factory was once Land Rover’s Mecca, but since 2007 UK production is shared with Halewood, on Merseyside, and now its Defender and Discovery models are being built in Slovakia, which I find depressing.
We are living at the tail end of what can only be described as the golden era of motoring. It was an era that began just after the second world, when car ownership came within the grasp of the ordinary family. Coincidentally, it was when Land Rover started production. Back then, cars were simple to maintain and the roads were empty – a wonderful combination for the new motorists. Dad would spend Saturday tinkering under the bonnet, then take the family out for a Sunday afternoon drive to enjoy the fun of the open road. Happy days indeed.
Meanwhile, the British automotive industry virtually disappeared due to a combination of factors, too long to list here but with government intervention (ie, interference) looming large. Thankfully, Land Rovers lived on, but the simple models most of us loved are now out of production – again, partly due to legislation, but not wholly. After all, no government ever decreed that every Land Rover must be filled with ever-more-complex, expensive electronics. These, of course, are the vehicles that a traditionalist like Richard Hall refuses to work on in his Norfolk Garage.
Eccentric
In the same article about threads, Richard Hall pointed out that as recently as the 1980s, you would find BSF and Whitworth (BSW), Unified National Fine and Coarse (UNF and UNC), British Association (BA) and metric threaded fasteners, all on the same Series III. There’s something reassuringly eccentric about that for traditionalists. It’s very easy to go nuts over bolts.
But, joking aside, make the most of enjoying traditional Land Rovers and indeed internal combustion engines, because their days are numbered. The biggest danger isn’t electric propulsion, which is inevitable, but an anti-4×4 movement that is growing in strength. It began a couple of years ago in Germany, where Green party activists wanted SUVs banned from cities – a cause that has been embraced by Greenpeace, which blocked a shipment of SUVs in Bremerhaven, as a publicity stunt. A week later, an estimated 20,000 anti-SUV protestors stormed Frankfurt Motor Show as Chancellor Angela Merkel toured the stands.
Here in the countryside — including very close to my home in rural Northamptonshire — car owners have woken in the morning to find the tyres of their cars slashed by misguided, balaclava-wearing young “activists” who reckon we are responsible for killing the planet. They don’t understand that in this corner of the planet, we have no choice because there is no public transport. And I mean none, as in zero, zilch, rien, niente, nada. The nearest bus stop is five miles away.
My 80-year-old next-door neighbour is a widow waiting for a hip operation, who can only hobble a few painful steps. Her elderly Ford focus is her lifeline, so imagine her distress the other morning when she woke up to find all four tyres slashed.
These days, protest movements tend to take on a momentum of their own. Protestors tend to be young and impetuous and don’t always acquaint themselves with the facts before they go a-protesting. If you’re not from the countryside, you probably wouldn’t realise that out here in the sticks, people use cars because they are a necessity.
I’m not knocking the young and passionate. They’re worried about the grim future our planet appears to be facing. I can fully understand their concerns, although not always their methods.
It could be only a matter of time before SUV owners are persecuted. With bloated luxury Range Rovers owned by the despised super-rich, Land Rover owners could be particularly vulnerable.
This is indeed the end of a golden era of motoring. Let’s get out there while we still can.
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