Haircut anyone?

[Mike Costigan]

Mike,
I thought all RFs had a fabric covered timber piece beneath the screen. All the ones I've owned had.
Reckless,

Curious! A quick search through my photos would suggest that all (most?) fabric saloons with the small radiator and scuttle lamps have a full-depth screen, whilst the later cars with taller radiator and front headlamps do seem to vary; I have found examples with full-depth screens, others with the circa 2" timber as this example, and even one with an intermediate depth with perhaps a 1" timber ... most strange!

An example of the full-depth screen:


  008-2-1.jpg (Size: 73.38 KB / Downloads: 167)

and the 'intermediate version:


  image808012016395978.jpg (Size: 46.93 KB / Downloads: 165)

Looks like there's scope for further research there!

[Hedd_Jones]

Your top photo has no seperate peak and full depth screen? An early mid size radiator car? Late 1928ish? Your lower pic has same wings as my AE a seperate peak and the timber. So early 1930?.
The hairdressers car has a seperate peak and the timber. So is it a car from sometime in 1929?.

Seems from those deductions its whenever the front of the body was changed to add a seperate peak. Sometime in late 1928 early 1929? Sometime

[JonE]

UV was only issued from June-September 1929, so its got to be reasonably early in that.. so perhaps built May or June 29?
There seems to be a great deal of variation in the RF transitions.

What we do need to trace is a survivor of the earliest incarnation of the RF which only seems to exist now as a sole factory image - i.e. the pre-long door fabric. Coincidentally one v.recently appeared on carandclassic very reasonably, but is essentially a special (doors open conventional way) and must have been a 2nd or 3rd variant RF originally.

[AustinWood]

My early March 1929 fabric saloon has the deep wooden strip below the screen but had no peak when I got the car.
The very similar June 1930 I had in the 60s had the narrow wooden strip below the screen and the shorter aluminium peak.
Are the screens the same? If so then perhaps the roof height varies too.

[Mike Costigan]

... What we do need to trace is a survivor of the earliest incarnation of the RF which only seems to exist now as a sole factory image - i.e. the pre-long door fabric...

I assume the factory image to which you refer is that found in Wyatt's book (plate 20) showing a fabric-bodied version of the R saloon? If so, I'm not convinced that was ever a production model; there are other images like that one, depicting variants that never went into production, and this may well be another.