Reply To: Clifford cultivator restoration – colour help!

[sidevalve5]

Hi Norman,

You may be able to help me. I bought my Clifford 40 years ago and got a Trusty at the same time. A chap was giving up his ground and wanted to clear his sheds. Used both for a few years, the Trusty had the better engine, but the transmission was knackered. The Clifford was hard to start, but the hooked tines did a really good job in seedbed preparation. It had a massive oil leak where the bevel drive housing joins the rotor axles. Someone told me it was a common fault when the machine gets old because the oil seal was, I think I recall him saying, leather. Which dried out and wore. I used to have to store the machine tilted with the engine on the ground, otherwise it would loose all the oil. Still had to give it a good top it up every time I used it. I put some new tines, big end shells and rings on it, all purchased from Chester Hudson. Then moved and put it away in a shed, ready for the day I had the time to carry out all the repairs to make it a reliable machine again. Two years ago my Trusty Jap 5 engine blew the big end. So I took the engine off the Clifford and made one good engine out of the two. Still have another spare engine, so the plan was to fully re-build that one and fit it to the Clifford.

Where you can help me is with advice about the dismantling of the rotor axles and what I should expect to find in the way of oil seals. Then how to get the parts to fix the problem. Like yourself, am in no rush to do this. At the very earliest it will be a couple of years before I get round to doing it. Have another couple of working rotovators I have done up, so there is no pressure to fix the Clifford.

It was a right old beast to use, no throttle, just the governor to regulate the engine speed. When you pulled the dog clutch handle to engage the rotor you had to do the same for the drive with the next movement of your hand. Otherwise it tried to jerk out of your remaining hand on the handle bars. Was younger, fitter, stronger and quicker back then and it still took some effort to use. Remember I could not get it to start one day with single swings, so kept winding it up as fast as I could. It fired, the handle came out, swung around and hit me straight in the mouth. There was blood everywhere. All good fun though.

Best wishes,

Grahame