[AT] Was Serious Restoration Now philosophy

Larry D. Goss rlgoss at evansville.net
Tue Jan 18 21:11:48 PST 2005


I would hope that collectors and restorers would base their evaluation
of a tractor on the basis of the INTENT of the owner in performing a
particular restoration whether it's from used parts, NOS parts,
remanufactured parts, made-from-scratch parts, or whatever, rather than
on a list of rules.  The problem with allowing ourselves to fall into
the pit of having some sort of hard and fast formula or rules regarding
what is or isn't a legitimate restoration is that once those guidelines
are established, then a tractor's "value" can be judged by anyone with a
checklist.  It becomes a cut-and-dried thing where there is no
subjective judgment.  

This same sort of problem rears its head in personnel decisions.  HR
directors would love to be able to have a checklist on every position in
a corporation.  That way, any semi-skilled individual can make personnel
decisions regardless of whether they understand anything at all about
the subjective aspects of the day-to-day interactions and quality of a
particular employee or the job they are doing.

Theoretically, using purely objective criteria for making judgments
about people or tractor restorations should eliminate or at least
minimize our tendencies to be prejudicial in our choices, but when all
subjectivity in judgment is eliminated, it raises other problems that
are just as troublesome.  Think of the difficulties we have with
mandatory sentencing, "three strikes and you're out", zero tolerance,
and a whole host of other situations where we have systematically
eliminated any subjective judgment on the part of those who are supposed
to be able to be in decision-making leadership positions.  We don't need
that in our "hobbies", too.

Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Spencer Yost
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2005 12:08 PM
To: at at lists.antique-tractor.com
Subject: Re: [AT] Was Serious Restoration Now philosophy


*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
On 1/17/2005 at 9:01 PM Guy Fay wrote:
>I know that the last time I posted one of these, that some of you 
>sniffed that casting new parts wasn't a REAL restoration. So you don't 
>have to click the links if you don't want to. Everybody else-Craig 
>Anderson's put up some pages about the restoration of a Mogul 45 that 
>came out of a river bank.
>http://www.andersonofrosholt.com/17501.html
>

Guy's post begs the question:  "What has to be left of the original
tractor
for the process of refurbishment to be called 'a restoration of an
original
tractor?'"  If engine or frame is gone, is this no longer a restoration
but
the manufacture of a replica?   Do you _have_ to use used parts?  If all
that is left is the serial number tag, is that sufficient to call it a
restoration of an original tractor?.

In other words we all have included some used, some new and some
Metal-shop/foundry/home made parts in a restoration.   Where is the line
crossed from "a restoration of an original tractor" into "making a
replica
of an original tractor"?.

I have wanted to start this discussion, and Guy's post gives me the
chance.

Spencer Yost
Owner, ATIS
Plow the Net!
http://www.atis.net

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