New cast Bren gun pintles

[Phil Waterman]

Originally Posted by shaun

with my museum professional head on i could say so much on the subject of repro parts being passed off for genuine, like making a jeep out of 99% new parts and claiming its a 1942. in fact DVLA are now clamping down on such vehicles, mainly landrovers on old tax free plates but im sure they are looking at other "reproduced" vehicles (whoops i went into a bit of a rant there, sorry guys ! ) Ben the mounts a great !

Hi Shaun

You raise a very interesting and important issue. I like the method used by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC their policy when restoring aircraft is that parts they fabricate are Stamped as being reproduction. Once I heard about that I've tried to do the same on restoring my CMPs stuff that is non-original which might be misleading to the person after I'm gone are marked with a date installed. Generally I try to punch these in with number stamp. Of my three CMPs there is only one that I would claim to be original, the others are composites. When we re-engine a vehicle it is often the only way to able to drive the trucks.

We have all seen Jeeps and other vehicles which they basically jacked up the data plate and rolled a new vehicle up behind it and attached the data plate and called it the same vehicle. Doesn't detract from vehicle interest as examples of vehicles or from enjoying driving them.

Of course as we get further and further from the date of manufacture of any vehicle it is harder and harder to have an original vehicle. I have really enjoyed watching some of the members of the forum carefully cleaning and restoring parts, sometimes this is because a replacement is not available while other times it is because they want to retain as many parts as possible.

Cheers Phil