Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club

Mine came yesterday and my immediate thought was “Well done”. A very impressive start, Robert.
A new editor always stamps their own ideas on a magazine and you have done that without going over the top. Long may you carry on.
Don’t forget, everybody, the editor can only print what you send him so please don’t sit back and watch other people do the…[Read more]

It’s difficult to tell from the picture but that does look like a Bean single row hand drill which cost £9 17s 6d in 1952. Bean was the trade name and the company that made it was called Humberside Agricultural Products located near Brough in East Yorkshire. It could be purchased without the handlebars to enable units to be mounted in multiple on…[Read more]

Well done, Pike! The two column format gets my vote as well.

That sounds about right- once you start moving the middle unit is not tracking in line. Try pushing and pulling it side to side when it’s on the ground (and not when the engine is running!).

Possible causes of sideways movement is wear in the oilite bushes on the front pivot of the S-frames, otherwise there may be a fracture in the brackets…[Read more]

Looking forward to it already!

When I was doing the Allett Regal 36″ for Allett Mowers I used a local bicycle shop to supply the outer cables, inner cables, ferrules and nipples that I needed. You can always unsolder the old nipples off your existing cable and re-use them if they are not obtainable any longer.

I will echo that sentiment as well, Chris. He was always ready to help when we used to show at The American Museum in Bath and was always on the other end of the ‘phone if a member needed help or information about Mayfield. He will be sadly missed.

RIP Ray

I thought it felt thinner as well but there are the same number of pages so I think the paper must be thinner.

The cover photo was taken at the Gloucestershire Steam and Vintage Extravaganza last year- we all know it as the South Cerney steam rally. It is a Garner tractor converted by the factory into a canal or riverside tug; a number of…[Read more]

I have no idea of the model of Villiers engine fitted, Andy, as the company records don’t record it. All that appears is either “Blackburne” or “Villiers” in the respective column. The only survivor from the early days (so far) is my number 220 which has a Blackburne fitted, so it’s still a mystery to be solved.

If I was to hazard a guess I would…[Read more]

Hello, Will.

Thanks for your interest in Trusty equipment. The first 2-wheeled tractors were made in Broad Lane, Tottenham in 1933 starting with serial number 100 but they weren’t a great success with many of the first production of 25 being returned to works for modification. After a short break production was resumed and the serial numbers…[Read more]

If there are two seals fitted the standard practice is to fit the inner one facing inwards to stop the oil coming out and the outer one faces outwards to try to prevent the muck getting into the bearing surface.

Looks like a standard single speed (with no reverse) fitted with a JAP 5 engine; probably dates from around 1946-49 looking at one or two other features but without the tractor serial number it’s difficult to pin down.

The serial number can be found on the rear of the transmission case where the handlebars are bolted to the machine.

It would be…[Read more]

That’s normally the case but when the original is so rare there has to be a certain amount of discretion used. So long as it looks and works in a similar way to the original nobody will pick you up on it.

It sounds like you have a crack in the distributor cover. Somebody tried to play a trick on me once and took the rotor arm out of the distributor- the engine still worked fine! That was down to a crack that the spark was tracking down.

They aren’t available I’m afraid. Most people adapt another make of skimmer to suit the Trusty disc to get over the problem, but don’t stop looking for a genuine one, they do come up occasionally but you will normally have to buy a whole plough to get the skimmer.

One thing we found when these were in everyday use was that the internal part of the caliper used to seize into the outer slide. The only remedy is to take the whole caliper off (it’s only held on with two bolts) and completely clean it and reassemble with a very thin smear of grease to stop it rusting. You can then use the big adjusting bolt to…[Read more]

Those Kubota charging systems seem to go on forever so the first thing I would check is that every wire has continuity from end to end. With the amount of vibration and in view of it’s age it wouldn’t be too far from the truth to find that the copper inside the plastic outer may have parted in more than one instance.

In the past I have used Slosh, a tank sealant that forms a hard coating on the inside of the tank. So far no problems despite leaving fuel in the tank for prolonged periods. If you have pinholes in the tank they are best taped over with masking tape beforehand, then once the two-part mixture has hardened inside the tank you can flat it off and it…[Read more]

Blackburne engines were used in some early machinery- my own Trusty 220 (the 45th production machine) has a Blackburne engine. This manufacturer had no connection at all with Blackburn Aircraft Ltd as you can probably guess from the spelling.

Blackburne engines were produced by a company called Burney and Blackburne who were based originally near…[Read more]

I agree, that engine is definitely a JLO which was made in Germany in various sizes. Some of the larger JLO’s had steel cable as recoil rope and they were always associated with high power, low weight and long life, being fitted to many commercial mowers from the continent such as Dori. Unfortunately the company closed down on the mid-Nineties so…[Read more]