9 replies to this topic

[covjamie]

thanks any help is appreciated.

[newdawn1st]

AFAIK Heritage panels are made from the original tooling, so your pretty much guaranteed a panel that is as it was intended so provides the best fit, pattern panels are copies and as such can't be guaranteed to be the same as original but do come close.

Pattern panels are known for their poor fit compared to heritage but that by no means says there rubbish just not as good, it ends up a trade off between initial outlay of panel against time spent making it fit. Some people can't be bothered with the frustration of making a pattern panel fit while others have got it down to a fine art and can fit them easy as heritage.

Sure some body work peeps will and some informed knowledge

[Retro_10s]

As above really - General new panels are copies of the originals and a such - rarely fit perfectly and are often profiled slightly different. Heritage Panels are made from the Original Tooling, so In theory they should be the best you can get...

This is no longer the case (currently anyway) as the Tooling has been Worked very hard since it's rebuild and is long due refurbishing again! Heritage quality is now dropping fast but the prices are not.....

Plenty of people have gone back to the general panel suppliers now, supports local suppliers, is cheaper, and the Heritage panels need the same amount of fettling. This is not typical of all Heritage panels - but something to keep an eye out for.

[Stevie W]

During restoration of my Mini 10+ years ago, the company carrying out the work used a mixture of heritage/genuine panels and some pattern panels.

By-and-large the genuine ones were a better fit but some of the pattern panels were every bit as good or even better.
I remember them using genuine front wings and pattern A panels because this combination was better than using the genuine A-panels!

Steve

[cherryblossom]

when i had cherry re-built at the front only used heritage parts as they are meant to fit better which they fit perfectly.
but it your looking for a cheaper option then usually its the normal ones are ok but just need some adjusting to fit them.

hope that helps a lil

[SolarB]

[attachment=90855:P1070193_b.JPG]
This is the fit on the Heritage panels I bought (NS front wing and front panel). The surface finish they use is better than the afermarket panels but for the price I'd hoped for a better fit. |
Will think long and hard before paying the premium for Heritage in the future.

[Shifty]

I'd agree that the gap in quality between the heritage stuff and pattern getting much smaller.

On Spud I fitted all patern parts and had no real troubles, with Dots we used genuine wings and to be honest the only real differance was that the steel was slightly thicker.

[minimat]

So what is the difference between heritage panels and gen rover ones available through x part dealers then?

[lrostoke]

I could be wrong here but I thought Heritage panels were panels made used the original Rover tooling ?? So gen Rover should just be Heritage panels.


Seems Xpart buy from Heritage

British Motor Heritage is a British Standard ISO 9001-2000 accredited supplier to Jaguar, Land-Rover, LTI and XPart for original equipment aftermarket components, and purchases parts from XPart for sale to its Approved Specialists. It also distributes Heritage products to XPart Dealers, Steelcraft panels for MG and Triumph models exclusively to Approved Specialists and Steelcraft Stockists and the Heritage MGF/MGTF Hardtop for after sale fitment.

[Frog]

thanks any help is appreciated.

Like what is said before the Heritage panels are pressed using the origanol tooling but this tooling is getting very old & needs refurbing, the overall quality of heritage panels seems to be dropping, I generally will use a mixture of heritage & pattern, some of the pattern panels these days fit very well, why pay £23.00 for an heritage "a" panel when you can get x2 pattern ones for the same price. Yes sometimes you have to do a bit of fettling to get the alignment right but the way heritage is going you do with them anyway. A lot of it comes down to personnal preference, I will fit what ever the customer specifies I have no problems with either.