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Peter,


 

Given your outstanding technical contributions and knowledge about our cars I will respond the best I can:

 

1. 'WE' are undisputed and long standing experts in TRR who vet each and every item submitted for inclusion in TR GOLD. WE do not comment on 'best,' safest,' or 'any other item' that is not part of TR GOLD,

SDF & PQI can do what the hell they like. They are not part of TR GOLD and currently not even part of TRR. I have my own experts who are thick on the ground.

 

2. TR GOLD parts do what they say on the tin. I'll leave you and SDF and other experts to mop up the rest. The Forum will continue to assist people who people with vehicles off the road.

 

3. TR GOLD will be here and now. The rest is up to the fairies - I have no idea what the future holds but if you do go and fix it.

 

Long ago, before the world got complicated, people worked on a simple premise.

If you didn't know where to go for something you wanted, ask someone who did.

 

And then they invented engineers.

Edited by Paul Harvey
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Darren,

 

Thank you for your (conceptual) support.

I think you 'get' how this might help.

I think you also get:

1. approval to go ahead is the start of the real work not the end

2. money is irrelevant to begin with - but ultimate success brings money and benefits beyond anyone's wildest dreams

3. the first promotion is critical - the right parts at the right price from the right supplier will make or break the scheme

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" Do you have a budget for brand protection, in case an unscrupulous manufacturer decides to just copy the logo? "

 

Probably not, but if the situation arises I'm sure I can deal with it for Harv.

 

There's usually a simple answer to dishonest folks who try to take the p*ss.

 

Cheers

 

Alec

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Peter,

 

Given your outstanding technical contributions and knowledge about our cars I will respond the best I can:

 

1. 'WE' are undisputed and long standing experts in TRR who vet each and every item submitted for inclusion in TR GOLD. WE do not comment on 'best,' safest,' or 'any other item' that is not part of TR GOLD,

SDF & PQI can do what the hell they like. They are not part of TR GOLD and currently not even part of TRR. I have my own experts who are thick on the ground.

 

2. TR GOLD parts do what they say on the tin. I'll leave you and SDF and other experts to mop up the rest. The Forum will continue to assist people who people with vehicles off the road.

 

3. TR GOLD will be here and now. The rest is up to the fairies - I have no idea what the future holds but if you do go and fix it.

 

Long ago, before the world got complicated, people worked on a simple premise.

If you didn't know where to go for something you wanted, ask someone who did.

 

And then they invented engineers.

Paul,

I think you seriously underestimate the tasks your experts face.

 

Do they have facilities for surface hardness testing, to eliminate 'cheese' camshafts?

Do you have experts skilled in crack testing to eliminate improperly rebuilt hubs?

Do they have means to test durability of polymers ?

Can they measure thickness of surface platings, and durability ( eg chrome)?

What facilities are there for precision measurements of dimensions of parts ?

What standard original parts do your experts have available for comparative measurement, as a fraction of the ten thousand or so parts involved?

Do they have access to each TR variant on which to trial fit parts?

 

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. Gold presents a monumental task, even to experts with access to a full engineering test laboratory.

I cannot see Gold being feasible.

 

Peter

Edited by Peter Cobbold
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Peter,

 

I'm far from an expert in these things, but maybe you're, understandably, thinking too much like an engineer (sorry!!).

 

On the Forum, parts are regularly discussed and it is often clear exactly which ones work and which don't. This isn't because someone has measured the exact composition of brake pads, for example, but because loads of people have used them in real world situations.

 

I have no idea how TR Gold will be tested/established, but there may be more than one way to skin a cat.

 

Best,

Tim

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indeed you can

How rude...........!

 

Rational people take criticism constructively, you are doing yourself no favours at all.

 

As for going on and on, you are the expert at that.

 

How many people are going to be discouraged from continuing being a TRR member by your absolute rudeness.

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Peter, I'm far from an expert in these things, but maybe you're, understandably, thinking too much like an engineer (sorry!!). On the Forum, parts are regularly discussed and it is often clear exactly which ones work and which don't. This isn't because someone has measured the exact composition of brake pads, for example, but because loads of people have used them in real world situations. I have no idea how TR Gold will be tested/established, but there may be more than one way to skin a cat. Best, Tim

Tim,

Its the scientist in me... I always try to look at a project from all angles. Imagination is a wonderfull thing but it has to be constrained by reality ! I am as critical of my own ideas as anyone else's, it's essential in my trade. Hence my questioning approach to gold.

 

Gold is a clever scheme, ingenious. It will work and cannot actually fail. But it wont improve parts quality one iota. Here's how.

The vast majority of parts being sold are fit for purpose. So a scheme for simply sticking a gold label on without doing any testing at all will work for the vast majority of parts. It will be possible for the gold scheme to avoid approving the 'iffy' parts simpy by scanning the forum for reports of failures. Suppliers also know which parts cause complaints. By avoiding 'assessing' ( ie labelling) anything made of rubber, camshafts, IRS hubs, panels that dont fit, starter motors that melt etc etc the gold scheme will appear to work. But in reality it will not do anything to improve quality. Gold will ensure the duff parts will remain uncontested and unresolved. The gold labels will only be stuck on parts that are innocent of failures.

 

I have to admit its clever. Full marks to Paul for spotting a business opportunity. The ploy I raise above will ensure it does not fail. But gold can't weed out the unfit for purpose parts that cause us grief on here. Because gold cannot test them, it will avoid including them in the scheme. Clever indeed, but not I think what TRrers are looking for. Gold will embrace the haystack of already adequate parts not the needles that are not fit for purpose.

 

In my view the forum is far and away the most effective quaity control we have, with PQI sorting out the parts that are not fit for purpose.

 

Cheers,

Peter

Edited by Peter Cobbold
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Peter, as far as I can tell it's not intended to improve parts. Its purpose is to quantify existing parts that fit/look/perform as the original Stanpart ones did.

 

I can see how this would work quite simply. In my opinion it's not really suited to rebuilt hubs etc where the second hand part might be invisibly damaged. It's more suitable for body panels (easy to asses by asking the TR restoration companies), reproduction switches, lights etc etc. These are replaced day in day out by professional restorers etc. If they say it fits perfectly and it can be matched to an original Stanpart, it gets gold.

 

I do have to admit though, the whole silver/platinum thing is confusing and to my mind superfluous. It seems there is a lot of misunderstanding on here so imagine what it will be like in print without the discussion.

 

In terms of protecting the logo, you don't have a chance in hell. It's too generic and even if it did slip through the checks at the IPO and get approved, it's just a logo. You still need to protect the word mark and defending any intellectual property is massively expensive. For instance, if I copied it and TR Gold threatened to sue me I would just dig out all the prior art I could find for similar logos and bury the case in paperwork. That's expensive for a lawyer to defend. I have a lot of experience in this defending my own company against imitation. A simple case is £60k to bring to court.

 

I'd forget about any trademarks etc.

Edited by rhino_mac
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Paul

I hope that the feedback that you received from this forum adds value to the presentation you plan make to your fellow directors in the coming week. Clearly you have a passionate belief in TR Gold and maybe when it is documented it will become clearer to those that fail to get it.

To me, at the moment, TR Gold is primarily a commercial brand creation strategy, but it is not possible, for me, to see the technical benefits through the smoke and the spin pending it being documented.

 

Regards

 

Rog

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How rude...........!

 

Rational people take criticism constructively, you are doing yourself no favours at all.

 

As for going on and on, you are the expert at that.

 

How many people are going to be discouraged from continuing being a TRR member by your absolute rudeness.

 

+1

I always find Peter's contributions interesting and frequently learn something from them, I wish I could say the same for most of PH's comments!

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Come on guys. I think Peter is owed an apology. I admire Paul's efforts to improve spares quality at the pre sale stage. The PQI

seems to be after the event, for example when something fails shortly after installation, it also has a place, can they not go hand in hand some how?

Maybe Paul is feeling the pressure, I hope that's all? Paul has come up with the idea and very admirable it is too, and upto now has elicited the discussions that are needed, to iron out the detail and the pros and cons.

I for one would always pay a premium for a quality part.

As for testing, other classic car marques must experience quality issues, would there be any mileage (pun intended) in talking to them about a joint venture?

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Well...thank you.

Reassuring to know I'm not posting gobbledygook...yet. If ( when?) the time comes that I write cobboldygook I hope you'll tell me so, with the same friendly words.

Even so I wish I had the ability to match the eloquent description of a complex contraption given by a fellow prof, while its inventor Rowland Emett looks on:

Peter

Edited by Peter Cobbold
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Peter I would just like say. I could read all your post.

Infact I do. And I no hell of a lot of people that I meet that say

I read peters post. Everyone is positive about what you say.

I must say it was only last week that I was in a meeting with some people from Riyadh saudi. we ended up talking about the weather. As you do.

It was only when we were talking that I thought about something you said a while back

Regarding the world warming up. And I have been trying to find this post since.

This gentleman said it is getting hotter, he showed me a film on his phone of a lizard in the desert. In this film the lizard was running. But running towards People

He said a lizard would normally run away from man.

In stead the lizard ran towards the man.

It was the mans shadow that the lizard wanted to shade under.

Keep it going Peter. We all think you should.

Helen

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5400 members of TRR are not in a local group, do not engage at all with TRR, and pay their subscription every year.

600 members of TRR get ALL the benefits, and make all the noise.

 

TR GOLD attempts to offer something to the 90% of members who have no say, are never heard, and are waiting for something new.

 

The 10% already get value beyond compare.

A few of them shout their head off on Forum, including me.

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Hello fellow forumites.

 

I have just waded through all the posts on this TR GOLD initiative - for that is what it is, An initiative by a director who is trying to actually do something for the wider membership unlike some who sit on their hands and do little or nothing to take the club forward.

 

A couple of things spring to mind. When I ran a Porsche some years back a friend of mine sent me a list of VAG parts numbers that equated to parts used by my Porker. For example, a 944 door handle was £68+. the EXACT same handle but with a part number for a VW Golf was £9.70. The Porsche handle even came in the same VW/Audi packaging and so there is certainly a good reason to identify parts that will fit and be serviceable on your TR even if they are non TR O/E parts.

 

Another point about O/E parts. When Triumph were designing their bits and pieces they had in mind a specification that would provide trouble free motoring for just ONE year. That was the length of time of your Guarantee 12 months or 10,000 miles which ever came sooner. Of course cars didn't just expire at 13months and most TR's would soldier on for several years before rust became the major factor in consigning them to the scrap heap. Mechanically, the cars were for the most part over engineered. Just look at the flimsy pressed steel wishbones used in modern cars and compare them with your TR if you don't believe me. However, today very few TR's get anywhere near these mileage figures per year. (My own Dove only clocked up about 600 miles last year between MOT's although I did do about 2500 miles in the TR3S) . The point I'm making is that people who fit parts to O/E spec today will probably never wear them out in Dry Summer Use Only TR motoring which now seems to be norm in TR ownership.

 

Looking at the scheme which Paul has proposed, I quite like the idea of Silver, Gold and Platinum and I note the comments that have been made to try and improve it. Speaking as someone who competes the idea of having better than standard parts is what we try to obtain. ie Steel crankshafts, pistons, rods etc, All of these items are for the most part race proven but no one who races a car would ever complain if that part broke during a race. We might swear a lot but if you go racing you don't whinge when it goes t*ts up. And if it does break then we try and engineer a better solution so it doesn't happen next time. A lot of these better than standard parts are already available to the average TR owner but they don't always make the car better to drive on the public roads but I don't see anything wrong in giving these race proven parts a platinum badge/sticker. After all, no one is forcing members to buy them.

 

There is another point to consider, The majority of TR parts suppliers are also not getting any younger. Some of the owners will be thinking of retiring themselves in the not too distant future and so what will happen to their companies? Racetorations, TRGB, TR Enterprises, TR BItz for example? Will they be passed on to family members? Will they be sold to new people who might not be as enthusiastic about the cars but see the business for what it is, a business. or will they close down completely and thus remove some of the parts from the supply chain? MOSS is the odd one out here as its more of a corporate concern and so one would expect them to take the long view but corporations have a habit of closing down supply chains when it suits them.

 

Moving on to the GOLD standard, as long as its a mean of identifying O/E spec parts then I don't see what the fuss is about. Just think bout the crappy rotor arms that flooded the market a few years ago - and are still out there! I could say the same about TR3 starter buttons. I fitted THREE before junking the lot for a Jaguar starter button instead. I don't for one minute think that the TRR or the parts suppliers will ever be able to supply all O/E spec parts for your TR but the scheme is a step in the right direction and its for the benefit of members who are new to TR motoring who should benefit most. Not us old farts who have had TR's for 40 years or more and know what sort of left handed droggle nut you should be using on your fulcrum post and that it should be made of unobtanium rather than bullshitainium.

 

So, before we all condemn Mr H for coming up with a scheme that could/will benefit the club, the suppliers and above all the members, lets give it a chance to see if can work. As Paul himself says, if it doesn't then it will fade away and he can go and sit in the corner with a hat marked 'D' on it. but as Bill Piggot once said. "if you want something doing, ask a busy man" so judging by the number of posts on this thread, Paul has certainly been that.

 

Hoges

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Hoges,

If the outcome of gold were indeed to achieve , as you say, ".....identifying O/E spec parts.." then nobody would query the scheme.

But to do the amount of testing needed to confirm a part is of OE spec is beyond TRR resources. Simply eye-balling a part is not confirming it is OE spec. You saw nothing outwardly wrong with those three starter switches, why should an expert gold assessor do any better than you ?

It's the practicalities that confound the scheme. What would you have needed to do to test those switches? - did they fail immediately? - or after a few cycles?- what was the failure mode? and what test rig would gold have need to spot it? And it would be just one amongst all possible failure modes that would need to be assessed.

The Mk1 Eyeball is not going to confirm any part is of OE spec. If gold is a scheme to assess if a part merely looks right then PH should indicate so to the Board.

For all we know, gold might simply label parts that have never failed or be complained about. These parts could be identified as never having appeared in data aggregated from: PQI + forum posts + assessors' own experience + suppliers' customer feedback. Is that what PH will propose to the Board?

 

But gold will not perform the functions of either PQI or SDF, or feedback from the Technicalities forum.

 

Peter

Edited by Peter Cobbold
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Peter I would just like say. I could read all your post.

Infact I do. And I no hell of a lot of people that I meet that say

I read peters post. Everyone is positive about what you say.

I must say it was only last week that I was in a meeting with some people from Riyadh saudi. we ended up talking about the weather. As you do.

It was only when we were talking that I thought about something you said a while back

Regarding the world warming up. And I have been trying to find this post since.

This gentleman said it is getting hotter, he showed me a film on his phone of a lizard in the desert. In this film the lizard was running. But running towards People

He said a lizard would normally run away from man.

In stead the lizard ran towards the man.

It was the mans shadow that the lizard wanted to shade under.

Keep it going Peter. We all think you should.

Helen

Thank you Helen, I cant find the forum post But I think I was talking about climate change bringing, this century, extreme temperatures that a human could not survive outside by day;

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/middle-east-future-heat-humidity-19599

The original article is behind a paywall but the abstract is here:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v6/n2/full/nclimate2833.html

Peter

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Surely, the crux of this matter is what is actually implied by TR Gold accreditation (along with what is perceived to be implied by it). If those that put the scheme in place make it clear that the parts that have TR Gold status have not been rigorously tested (and also state how the accreditation was actually awarded), then that is probably satisfactory. Thing is, how does the TRR make certain that the people that buy those TR Gold badged items know that they have not been rigorously tested? If it is not made clear to buyers, there could I imagine be legal implications.

 

If it were me, doing something like this for my own business, I'd certainly want the legal team having a close look before going ahead.

 

Darren

Edited by TR5tar
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So could someone explain how the Moss Classic Gold is different to Tr Gold

Classic Gold is what Moss say are Gold parts

TR GOLD is what TRR say are Gold parts and if they are from Moss they are TR GOLD parts from Moss..

 

 

1. If gold is a scheme to assess if a part merely looks right then PH should indicate so to the Board.

 

2. Is that what PH will propose to the Board?

 

3. But gold will not perform the functions of either PQI or SDF, or feedback from the Technicalities forum.

1. He would if it was but it isn't.

2. No.

3. Thank goodness for that.

 

 

If it were me, doing something like this for my own business, I'd certainly want the legal team having a close look before going ahead.

Me too

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Classic Gold is what Moss say are Gold parts

TR GOLD is what TRR say are Gold parts and if they are from Moss they are TR GOLD parts from Moss..

 

1. He would if it was but it isn't.

2. No.

3. Thank goodness for that.

 

 

Me too

Paul,

You have, I think, set a precedent as a Director who has floated an idea for an improvement to TRR on the forum. Whatever you are planning, I hope it works. Perhaps the feedback you have had on here was useful. If all Directors were as forthcoming, rather than remaining thumbnails on the rear page of TRA, we would be able to drive TRR forward the faster, despite that worryingly large 'silent majority'.

However before we castigate ourselves for the thousands on inactive TRR members, this is not unusual. A couple of WildlifeTrusts I know of have a huge percentage of 'inactive' - but fee paying - members. Smashing bracken to create habitat may be as unattractive an activity as doing anything with a TR other than driving it. And whose to say non-participants are not the saner for it.....

Peter

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