Radiator Patent Tags

[Rob Reilly]

Disassembling my TA radiator, I found three tags attached by wires passed through the fins.
Two have PATENT No 398110 and the third has the word COPPER.
The COPPER tag was soldered onto the back of the larger of the two PATENT tags.

The larger PATENT tag has numbers stamped on the back, 1337 and 3716, and the placement of these numbers suggests that they were intended to be stamped in the rectangles on the front, but the tag was put in the stamping machine upside down and the numbers ended up on the back.

I found the patent GB398110 online and it was issued in 1933 to Societe Anonyme des Usines Chausson of 35 Rue Malakoff, Asnieres (Seine) France for a radiator design with oblique angled tubes. This was a radiator manufacturer, but not to the design of this TA radiator.

Does anyone know anything about these tags? I couldn't find any evidence of where they might have belonged on my radiator, which has a Morris Motors Radiators Branch tag on it.
Were they used on Morris or other MG models?

[Bill Davis]

Rob,

Have a look at http://www.billdavis.org/MGTA/Original.html scroll down to the radiator info.
It won’t answer all your questions but hope it will help some.

Best regards,
Bill - TA2190

[Rob Reilly]

Thanks much Bill! That is exactly how mine were attached, with that tiny wire.

So 1337 means the 13th week of 1937, in which Jan 1 was a Friday so they probably didn't work Saturday, and we can figure Jan 4-8 was week 1, so the 13th week would then be Mar 29 - Apr 2.

According to the T Register, my car was built 04/05/1937, and it seems unlikely that they would have practiced just-in-time delivery of radiators from Oxford to Abington, so now I think I can interpret the build date as Tuesday the 4th of May rather than Monday Apr 5.

My Morris Radiators tag says 6444 and 0091 which I suppose could be another serial number and the clock number of the guy that made it? It seems redundant to put two serial numbers on it.

Now I see why they put the patent number on it. The core is staggered tubes, so it is covered by the Chausson patent.

But why wire it on instead of solder?

Well, they were hidden by the cross brace, so I'll put them back on but in a different place so they can be seen.