Hi Marc, your post #44 triggered a memory for me!
When I was very young I helped in practical work in developing small industrial engines and part of that was to study texts available on combustion chamber design and fuels.
My go to text book was "the high-speed internal-combustion engine" by Harry Ricardo first published in 1923.
I have the revised 1962 version giving a huge information about fundamental and practical aspects of engine design, combustion and fuels.
All outdated and dinosaur stuff now, but the base level of knowledge allowed me to sort out the real stuff from the B.S. in later life when idiots were crapping on about fuels and cams and stuff.
Ricardo I guess was the Pommy version of GMH ect.
Fred.

It is very pertinent to keep the old stuff written at the time of development/s. As you have noted the story can get embellished & twisted with the effluxion of time. One now has to be extremely careful with the amount of miss information on the WEB. A classic was one Goose on sheep race, that was going to fix a CRO. So the first thing was to turn it on & burn the rectifier & let some smoke out.

The guys on the American Forum (Quite rightly) were all into getting that pulled before someone got seriously injured. Whilst we do not discuss religion. An area demonstration in retrospect embellishment by story tellers ( and Ned Kelly does not escape them) is in the Christian Bible where Jonah was swallowed by a Whale. Zealot's, by blowing up his memorial in a twisted attempt to erase him did the opposite & proved he was real.

The memorial was actually on top of the kings palace: The king was actually called the Whale & probably locked him up thinking he was a right royal nutter: So really that's not really as exciting to the uneducated masses & some of the Kelly Hart stories are just as ridiculous.

Harts had property over the road from me & my family has owned this patch since 1872 but were in the area long before this & Great Grand parents on my mothers side had Harts as neighbours.

I believe it was Ricardo that designed the sleeve valve radials that Bristol used. Japanese did not like them. "The whispering death".
The exhaust venting by its nature was more of a "hiss" which rather meant that when they heard the Beaufighter it was too late.

I am pretty sure that their ignition coils are interchangeable with a model "T" & they ran alternators at 400Hz?

During the War's it tended to be the English & Germans that were able to squeeze the maximum power to weight & best fuel consumption out of engines.

Speaking of Fergusons & Engines I need to resume removing the head from mine. Nr 1 cylinder has issues

Getting a bit away from valve radios but yes, Ricardo used the sleeve valve layout on his single cylinder research engines.
With the sleeve he then had a very mechanically quiet running engine (no gear or valve clatter).
Critical for detecting the knock point when testing fuels as in that time the human ear was the detector.
None of this electronic crap back then.
He mentions the loudest noise while running was bearing rumble from the ball bearing mains.
It also meant the head was free to have variations of chamber shape and the comp ratio could be screw thread adjusted even while the engine was running! Bit like a super version of the model plane diesel engines we had!
The book had chapters on sleeve valve and supercharging the intake so I guess by the time the war came around he was full bottle on the type and the man for the WD to go to.
I worked on air cool stationary side valve engines doing experiments with fuels, CR and chamber shape trying to get more power without melting the heads or making it a pig to start. It all died in the end as Briggs made any Pommy engine look 100 years old and we just used Briggs for most applications or Honda if someone wanted a long life quality power plant, this is 1970' era.
I could go on and on but wont.
Fred.

Stationary engines on farms for pumping water and the like were an interesting subject when I lived in the bush though I wasn't a collector of these items because I didn't have anywhere to keep them. Wolseley and Lister made the most common types and people who did collect them did a good job with their restoration. The Wolseley was a side banger but I think the Listers were OHV, both low on the horse power but bullet proof and could almost run indefinitely.

My experience has been that B&S were very hit & miss. I have a 1979 engine & its an oiler & the manual actually says to de-coke it every 100hrs. The 12HP 1994 is not much better albeit running it on tractor oil is probably helping that especially when its fast approaching 1000 hrs. I did repair one B&S for a neighbour about four wood seasons ago; It developed valve problems & they were good at that.

Unusual feature was that all of the cooling fins were "mudded" up by wasps. It has been bored out 40 thou and is not dead yet: It got a change of oil type. Honda Ag bike here, 1989 has a firs life motor, Tractor (1951) was on its second set of valves & rings (being overhauled last 1985) Two other 1989 Honda's Fire Pump & a Lawn mower that cops heaps, first life no overhauls. Ute 1958 top overhaul 1983 still road registered original plates.

It is important as to what oil is used. Some newer engines have very tight tolerances & use thinner oil. But in my book there is too heavy. The oil is also part of the cooling in some engines. Most of the fleet here has always run on Shell oil & I have tin from shell fuel tins, when it was "Bio Co" pre 1926. Some oils leave motors filthy inside: Surprise is the ute which specifies SAE20. Bonus is if an engine blows its "Shell shock".

Another fascination was a Chinese engine on a Lawn mower. I see it as a clone of a B&S engine that had a bad habit of putting governor weights through the crankcase: Its thrown the governor weights.

You get what you pay for. Criminal waste of metal.

Marc the cheapest B&S engines were the ones that used the all alloy construction.
The barrel and crankcase one piece and the barrel was chrome sprayed (or something), they marketed them as a "Kool Bore" engine.
When used as a 3000RPM genset prime mover the life was laughable. Think they were the 3 and 5HP models (1 and 2 Kva gens).
Still got a couple in the workshop as momentos.
When the chrome(or whatever) wore through it was alloy to alloy with steel rings in between. Eeeeek!
Along with a plain main bearing at the flywheel end and a plastic governor wheel it was race to see what chewed out or flew off first.
There would be oil puking out the muffler, the crankcase breather and the flywheel and anywhere else it could find its way out.
The only possible plan for maintainance was to remove the old engine and bolt a new one in!
I would strip an engine for fun now and then and the wear in the bores and bearings was VISIBLE by EYE.
If the Chinese copied that design the result would have been B.A.D.!

I spent about 20 years up to 1998 working for Lister Petter Diesels as a TO and toward the end was the Chief Designer of Everything (I.E. got the blame for all disasters) but spent a lot of my apprentice years rebuilding horrible little petrol engines.
Fred.

It has within this throw away got to the point where there are no parts and nobody to fix, it nor anyone that is left that actually knows how to fix a damn thing. I wanted a part for a Makita blower. Makita being something that rarely needed parts. However, he could not get parts as the Monopoly brigade in the form of a Bunny Rabbit Warehouse, has managed to take over the brand here & is running him out of business.

If its a British engine & its not pushing oil out somewhere, it has problems, like there is none left.

The difference with some older cars is that unlike the stupidity of Australia. Countries like America, say if you build a car you have to provide parts and there is none of this fourteen year crap. You can still get new parts & panels for Model "A" Ford & several others.

Many tractors of the fifties are similar. I repaired a fifties Massey Ferguson 35 a couple of years ago: Cylinder head was cactus, & a few other bits had fallen off. No problem. Grey has need of a few engine parts. Its 1951: there are new parts out there.

Its like the light bulbs, how much energy & resources go into making things that are rubbish and their replacement, when one only needs: Like many old radios to replace the parts that are broken or worn out. Making parts to replace also uses labour if you have the affordable & educated labour that can make it.

I am still waiting to pounce on a greenie about paper bags: When I see one with a placard saying "Stop Killing Ducks to make Duck tape". Einstein's predicted moron generation is here. It is likely they no not Know that paper is made from cellulose & that's the tree they're hugging.

Modern Auto mechanics: Aka spare part replacers. Laugh (sic) Took metal car in (zephyr) to book in the plastic one (Mazda): Apprentice studying metal car: Me under breath, saying you are not getting your hands on this one. Its got grease nipples: Unlikely you would know what to do with them, irrespective of what they were attached to. It got ignition points (what? Never taught to fix them). Its manual (How do I drive that?) Then the oh hell! I can't plug it into a computer how do I know what's wrong, or adjust anything.

As for most of what China manufactures, I am usually the first to take the piss out of whatever it is though some years ago I decided to go against gut instinct and purchase a 5.5kVA generator off Ebay and this cost around $700 delivered. It is one of those plastic-cased generators of the sine wave inverter type which produce cleaner electricity than those horrible GMC generators that Bunnings were selling at the time.

The unit I purchased has the rip-cord start but this has been seldom used. It also has electric start either by the ignition switch or a fob remote, so that when camping, the generator can be located away from the camp so the noise doesn't annoy anyone. When I do this, I chain it to a tree and use the tree as a noise break.

A lot of camping forums have members who state that they wouldn't take any generator but a Yamaha or Honda. Fair enough if one has enough money for those brands but the trick is, this no-name generator I have has around 130 hours on it and has never missed a beat. I've only recently replaced the battery, which is just a 12V, 9Ah alarm battery. My only issue with this generator is that it weighs 55kg and I am getting too old now to lug weight like that around.

As for how the plastic cases on these things doesn't melt after running them at full capacity for hours on end is one thing I don't understand. There doesn't seem to be that much air flow going past the engine itself, then there's the starter motor, fuel tank, battery and the inverter to think about.

Brad there was a small version of those plastic case units that had the fuel tank mounted (jammed in) above the battery.
Read read that again, and then think what happens when petrol drips from the substandard plastic fuel tank that goes back to white powder and disintegrates (or the fuel lines went hard and brittle) ! What could possibly go wrong!!!!
After seeing a few of those beauties where the leaking petrol killed the battery (reason for service was : wont start!) I refused to have any part of them and recommended they all be used as land fill, although that would have then got me into trouble with somebody else.
The suppliers response to engineering queries was to say no ploblem we send more!!!!!!

The larger units were a bit better as the one you have, with a bit more room but full of "radio" connectors in wiring looms.
If you did not spray with WD40 they stop connecting. If any thing goes wrong with the engine or genny...its scrap time.
The are torqued together with ONE-WAY set screws, bolts and nuts.
Yes you can undo those fasteners by untorquing against the serrated surfaces but its horrible, and then do what? NO SPARE PARTS.
The switch-mode power assemblies are fully potted. Anything goes wrong..its scrap time.

I spent many hours assessing these things from the point of view of a Xgenset designer, submitted reports and was geneally looked at as having the wrong attitude . Attitude was THEY ARE CHEAP so go away we will just replace it if it fails.
OoooooK.
Fred.

Fred, it is amazing when one interprets the warranty on some products. "This bomb we sold to you blew up so we'll replace it with another one exactly like it", etc.

I am hoping my generator (and it's baby brother, a 1kVA unit purchased separately as a backup but hardly ever used) are 'second generation' ones that aren't affected by fuel tanks merging with batteries, etc. Then again, I may just be a lucky punter because not only has the fuel not leaked but the battery never leaked and neither has any oil. It's still in as-new condition and I wish I had the opportunity to use it more often. It's handy for when a camp is too windy to use my gas camping stove and I still feel like a mixed grille for tea - I just plug in an electric frying pan and press the remote key and she just starts up straight away. The remote has a range of about 30m.

Brad one of the things that got me was the companies that made that generator stuff even agreed it was rubbish. But just shrugged it off and despite hand on heart assurances that the problems would be addressed the next batches were exactly the same!

Back as a 1960's manufactuer we would scrap any bad design, refurbish/replace at no charge bad units and update the production.
Then the tariffs came down (thanks Bob and Paul) we were run out of business.

So we had to suffer through teaching a generation of Asian engineers how to make something decent. I had to put up with the 1st gen Korean/Chinese efforts. Maybe what they are selling now is better. The electronic design and performance was always excellent, the engineering just crap. They went straight into full production off a protoype and bluffed it out for thousands of units.

Another product story, the one thing Jaycar did when the larger capacity NiCad cells were coming on line was to hold a firm line with suppliers. One supplier sent batteries that proved faulty, leakage and all that.
All the stock was quarantined from all stores and sent back with a warning. (100's thousands of dollars worth back at you boys).
They responded by sending "new stock" EXACTELY the same, mixed with some of the batch number lots WE had returned!!!!
The Boss rang the OWNER of the Asian company(a huge battery concern) and told him how we had been disrespected and insulted and lost face. We would never buy from his company again. And we did not. Jaycar swapped to another supplier whose batteries did not leak and still did not leak up to the point I retired.
Fred.

Fred, that's pretty much how it is. No-one cares. Under Common Law, everything from a box of matches to a motor car comes with a seven year unconditional guarantee. The problem with Common Law is that you can't go to the police, you have to prosecute privately so companies know that even the few of us that know their rights cannot enforce them because Joe Average cannot afford to hold a manufacturer or retailer to account for it. Hiring a solicitor for 30 minutes in court is around four grand and only for a basic defence matter such as trying to get off a speeding fine. So people just put up with the BS.

As I pointed out before, I do not know why we waste money employing people in ACCC: When the Senate and a Royal Commission have both found them asleep at the wheel. If you get a faulty light fitting or bulb the warranty expects you to sent it to Malaysia, Singapore, where ever. Again making it not worth the paper its printed on.

Amusing is that I have rarely seen a British tractor, or Motor Vehicle, up to the time they banned oil leaks: Not leak oil somewhere. I think it was part of the extended oil change period as you need to keep topping it up. I am sure it was "Top Gear" in reference to I believe the XJ series Jaguar, where they built them for 21 years, or so and in that time never actually managed to put one together properly. Interesting contrast to the Germans who could put the body shell of a beetle together to fractions of a millimeter.

Engine was another matter. Dealer in Wangaratta used to have a range in stock, particularly in Summer. If you did not drive them right, they left Melbourne & cooked the engine some where around Wangaratta: $$$. Some early air conditioned automatics were like that. I was quite shocked one day at the range of 80's & 90's cars on the Hume Highway on a hottish summers day pulled over with cooling issues. I was pleased that the Zephyr had a 15pint (8.5l) radiator & four blade fan (Henry loved two blade ones): It was having no issues even that there was a complete, motor with gearbox in the tray.

I can't get the search to work??
Which is a real hassle because you can't access the old topics through Google anymore due to the change over to the new server.
And there are old topics I need to read in relation to repairs of models I've read before but I need to read it again.

The other topic is sale page? I have some stuff I want to get rid of before I move house and I'm wondering if the sale page will be opening soon? Thank you , pete

The search is working for me. Are you receiving an error message or being directed to a blank page?

Wanted and For Sale will be back soon. I will be working both days this weekend and events like this, and the radio auction last week have delayed getting this finished but it will be back - hopefully before Christmas. Work on the new Wanted page is done (as per recent test posting there). I am just waiting for time to finish the For Sale section.