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kwakers post above...

...my mention of three grey plastic wheel colours was for the #44a Silver Cloud as a stand alone model, I can not comment on other models in the regular wheels range and as far as I recall, the #44a grey plastic wheels are all of the same tread count, (I'll go away and check this and be wrong now!).

By the time other wheels are taken into account across the whole range of regular wheeled models, I expect more than three will exist and providing these shades can be seen to be different in the same photograph, by more than one person, they should be recorded.

GHOSTHUNTER.

I know you are right about some of the same wheels being done in light and dark plastic, they are from the same production period as your Rolls is and used on many models we have. I have many examples in our collection because we used Bob and Harold's Guides to find and record them years ago. We also noted the difference in those wheels as simply large and small and knobby versus (plain) Gray Plastic wheels. Measuring outer diameters and counting treads as Stannard introduced is much more concise, and is what we do today. Your point of adding color would only apply to GPW, could be kept light versus dark for simplicity, and could simply be a note rather than an adding so many new codes (???) I guess that would be up to how others feel. Mike Stannard ignored these known lt. & dk. GPW wheel colors, as well as some very well known model color variations. He must not have collected through those color variations, otherwise he would not have ignored them. It is as though he never had seen or heard of either the AIM or NAMC Guides we Yanks had used since 1971. kwakers

The only problem is that after 40 years it is going to be nigh on impossible to tell if the wheels are still the same colour as they were when the model was made.

The light and dark gray plastic wheels used by Lesney seem to hold their color very well in collections, even after 45 years. The question of whether the light tend to turn darker, or the darker lighten up when exposed to sunlight or chemicals, smoke, etc. is a good one Nick that I cannot really answer. If everyone checks their beater boxes for gray plastic wheels produced around 1959-65, they can clearly see the light versus dark color gray plastic, and we all may be able to learn more about them.
To further Ghosty's discussion of the 44A Rolls Silver Cloud, both AIM (1976 &1983 printings) and NAMC Catalogs (1971 printing) show only a single color gray plastic wheel (AIM calls them dark gray).
On the 44B Rolls Phantom V, AIM lists only gray wheels, while the NAMC guide lists both light and dark small gray plastic wheels used on it. Ghosty can tell us what he has found for his collection to compare with those listings. kwakers
I think after viewing Nick's, Martin's, and one other earlier Post, I may have some carvings on my cave walls they can work on.....LOL....I thought I felt dumb enough about computers, but now after that discussion.......

What we urgently need is a volunteer to organise and manage the SF section of this initiative. (I seem to be lumbered with the RW area.)
Any takers?

I have the earliest SF variations in an NAMC Guide I bought just last year, and I can help a bit with that information when that is found around our house. I am NOT your man on Superfasts though, I have them, but have little knowledge or interest ( I believe Tinman and I both say Ho Hum at this point or ZZZZ) in the hundreds of intentional base color, window color, paint shade, wheel, and decal changes Lesney intentionally made in the early seventies to try and convince we regular wheel people to 'Collect Them All.....'. I believe Nigel may already have cataloged 'The Bible' on the entire Superfast line(?).
The Regular Wheels are just in my blood to stay. kwakers

A request for the three shades of Grey Plastic Wheels on #44a, Silver Cloud, has produced this picture. Sorry if it needs scrolling or left clicking.

GHOSTHUNTER.

Hello Ghosty, Thanks for the Great picture. The leftmost Rolls shows as dark gray, the middle one light gray, and could the one on the right be a silver plastic wheel version that we see here?? That would make sense from my experience, but I might be wrong on the last? They are definately 3 different colors. The reflections in your pictures even make the middle one appear a bit silver wheeled to different sets of eyes, but not quite like the right one. Even in some EBay listings, inspections of 4 different pictures at different angles is needed to show only one very clear Gray plastic wheel to verify a Seller's description. In other listings, the gray wheels or the silver wheels are simply as clear as viewing the models in hand. Could it be just the use of a flash rather than natural light on a clear day? kwakers

Kwakers, i am sure that Ghosty has posted an image with three GPW versions, from dark grey on the left, medium in the middle, and light grey on the right. At least that's how it looks to me.

kwakers wrote:The leftmost Rolls shows as dark gray, the middle one light gray, and could the one on the right be a silver plastic wheel version that we see here??

That is what I was wondering, but I just can't decide whether that third one is a GPW or an SPW example. If the former, then I think we have to consider the possibility of there being a whole spectrum of shades of grey out there. However, my observations to date concur with those of the American cataloguers, namely that there are light and dark GPW and that these are two consistent and distinct shades.