Unusual Villiers / BSA F12 Sloper

[wristpin]

The term “rare” is over used by sellers on that auction site, usually when they don’t really know what they are selling but this Sloper advertised for £100 is unusual and may even be rare.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ransome-Marquis-BSA-Villiers-F12-Sloper-Engine…

At first glance it looks much like any other Sloper but look again and it will be seen to have a mechanical governor and a Zenith carburettor more often seen on Suffolks..

The mechanical governor suggests it as being one of the last incarnations of the BSA / Villiers F12 with electronic ignition and engine number starting A15 although everything that I’ve read says that they have a Villiers Carb.

I was under the impression that I’d never seen one in the metal but was reminded by a former employee that in the 80s we used to hire our a Pattison spiker that had one fitted!!

[andyfrost]

Angus , I think you’re correct in the term “unusual” , slopers with govenors are by no means common , I’ve seen a few in my time , but can’t recall what they were fitted to.
The good old auction site certainly raises some smiles…….if you’ve got £1000 to spare , you could treat yourself to a Shay Rotagardener , that being the star buy of the week on there.

Andy.

[trusty220]

It looks like it may be the BSA version that was fitted to the Marquis/Auto Certes range before Villiers took over the design.
I’m not convinced that it was fitted to a Ransomes mower, though, because the crankshaft is long and parallel sided with a straight keyway. All of the slopers that I’ve known fitted to Ransomes mowers had a short tapered crankshaft and you had to loctite the flywheel on (that was Ransomes’ recommendation).
You could get a flywheel with a parallel sided hole and straight keyway but that was fitted to the Briggs and Stratton engined version- not very successful because the tick over was too high, and if you adjusted it down enough to disengage the clutch shoes the exhaust valve lifter came into play and stopped the engine. The valve lifter was supposed to ease compression on starting (Easy-Spin Starting) but was more trouble than it was worth on the Marquis.
Just a few thoughts from the days when I used to earn an honest living!

[wristpin]

I agree about never having seen a straight shaft Sloper on a Marquis and also the issue with the Briggs’s incompatibility with the centrifugal clutch although Ransomes did offer extra strong clutch springs to alleviate that issue. However a Marquis with a Briggs was never as nice to use.
There was a similar issue when replacing worn out JAPs and MAGs with Kohlers on Mastiffs,
there again, stronger springs were available. Ransomes solution on later machines was to take the drive from the camshaft on Kubota and Honda lumps modified to run anti- clockwise (at the flywheel end) so that the half speed drive of the cam was the correct rotation for the machine.

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