Carb Tag Color Redux

[daykrolik]

Back in November 2013 I innocently raised the question of what color the aluminum number tags on the tops of the float bowls of the SU carbs were. This question stemmed from the fact that the original tags on the carbs on my XK150 were blue anodized aluminum (trust me, they were blue in pictures going back to when the car was newly purchased by my uncle and remained so). My question was greeted with polite skepticism. The expert opinion seemed to be that they were always silver, although one brave owner said his original tags appeared to be a "pale lime green." So it was with interest that I noted the picture on page 33 of the current March magazine in which the tags on "Andy Tomlinson's very original early 4.2" are quite clearly blue. I'm not a concours purist and certainly have no idea what proportion of these tags were blue, I just thought for those who are purists it might be an interesting subject to revisit. In any event, I've made some tags for my carbs of blue anodized aluminum, dutifully stamped with AUCI12 F, C and R, which add a nice bit of color to the engine bay.

[christopher storey]

You are absolutely correct. The tags have always come in a variety of colours, some being plain alloy, and the others being usually blue or pale green . I do not think that the differences have any significance at all, although the colours are more common on newer tags