CRH

[JHertzman@xxxxxxx]

In AD7-239 Michael Williams asks "What is CRH? I want to know what I missed
out on".

Been discussed a few times. Back in the sixties the Grinch, known in those
days as Doctor Paul Tenney, sometime editor of Alfa Owner, sometime Technical
editor of Alfa Owner, and sometime racer in Spiders, Spider Veloces,
Tubolares, etc, and il Fossile, aka Don Black, known in those days as
"Competition Department, Alfa Romeo Inc." and also known as "Service Manager,
Alfa Romeo Inc." together developed the idea of a Competition Reference
Service for Alfa Romeo owner/racers in the USA. In the original form it was,
if I remember correctly, a subscription service, in which what was learned on
a Sunday would go in the mail on Monday to update the basic data which Black,
Tenney  and their friends and associates put together.

A bit later the Alfa Romeo Owners Club published a version of it as the
Competition Advisory Service, but I gather that there was some
miscommunication between the Club and the people who had done the work, some
editing which may have been ill-advised, perhaps some editing that should have
been done that wasn't, so there are more than one version floating around, all
over twenty-five years old.

What Michael Williams missed was Don Black's posting in AD7-223 that, under
the prodding of a several serious AR enthusiasts, he was giving serious
thought to publishing a limited edition of a compilation of the original
material, some previously unpublished pages, notes, specs, prices, and a few
nostalgic memos, plus a short history of the project. Don explained "since
these reprints will be made from original pre-publication pages, they are not
pristine, and include marginals, smudges, comments, and notes accumulated over
time"- the stuff historians call pentimenti, the invaluable evidence of a
process at work.

Some of what was done back then has been incorporated in production changes;
some can't be replicated because the parts are no longer available; some will
be "just" old solutions to old problems, but its value as a historical
document is immeasurable. And certainly some of the technical advice is
timeless.

Brian Shorey, who gets postings as they come in, not in delayed digest form,
had his reply in the same AD7-223. Michael Williams would be well advised to
pull 223 out of majordomo and read both Don Black's posting and Brian Shorey's
reply.

John H. 

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