The archives I write
Each of these is a reference archive for one car, written slowly and corrected as better information arrives. They exist because the material an owner needs is usually scattered across club magazines, forum threads and out-of-print books, and a good deal of it disagrees with itself.
Everything on them is free to read. There is no advertising, no affiliate arrangement and nothing for sale, on any of them, and that is not going to change.
The car archives
The Triumph Stag
Around ninety pages on the car and on living with it: the cooling system, the engine, bodywork and rust, buying, ownership and storage, together with a journal that records work as it happens.
The cooling system and the alloy V8 get the most space, because that is where most Stag trouble starts. Three national clubs have been in touch about the archive.
The MG T-Series
The TA to the TF, built at Abingdon from 1936 to 1955. A technical library of around thirty articles sits alongside a model page for each type, so a reader can start from the car in front of them or from the job in hand.
The identification material has been corrected by the marque's TF Registrar, and those corrections are carried on the pages themselves.
The AC Aceca
Around 328 cars were built, which makes ordinary reference material hard to come by. The archive holds a chassis registry, sourced values rather than asking prices, and the history of the Thames Ditton factory.
It also sets out an investigation into the claim that the Aceca was among the first cars with a hatchback, with the evidence laid out so a reader can judge it.
The Jaguar E-Type
Identification, the engineering, what goes wrong, and a technical reference for the work that follows.
It concedes buying and values entirely to the established sources, and says so on the page rather than pretending to cover ground it does not.
The Jaguar Mk2
The Mk2 saloon and its running gear, written around a restomod: a car kept in use with modern brakes, cooling and drivetrain rather than returned to factory specification.
The point of it is what changes when a car is altered to be driven, and what that costs in originality.
The Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider
The twin-cam open car, its variants and the mechanical picture behind them.
I do not own one. The archive is written from documents, club material and the accounts of owners, and it is written that way on purpose, with the sources named.
The village and moorland guides
Two smaller guides cover the villages and moorland of the North York Moors: the local history, the walks, the moor tracks and the roads between them. They are written for visitors and for people who know the area, and they are free on the same terms as the car archives.
The Thornton-le-Dale guide is linked by the North York Moors National Park Authority.
- Thornton-le-Dale
thorntonledale.org
- The Yorkshire Moors
yorkshiremoors.com
How they are written
Everything is free. No advertising, no affiliate links, nothing sold, no sponsored pages. The archives are not a business and are not intended to become one.
Sources are named, so a reader can go back to them. Where two sources disagree, both are set out and the disagreement is left standing rather than quietly resolved in favour of whichever is tidier. Where a figure cannot be verified, the page says so and points the reader at the workshop manual or the relevant club instead of offering a number that might be wrong.
Corrections are welcome and are published, credited by name to the person who supplied them. Several pages carry corrections from club registrars and long-standing owners, which is how the identification material on the MG archive reached its present state.
If you are with a club and want to talk about linking, correcting or contributing, the contact page reaches me directly.