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Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

Hayter Hawk 12" graveyard mower.

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Does anyone have a Hawk with the original wooden anti scalp roller?  If so could you please post or pm the roller dimensions.

wristpin Sat, 09/01/2016

Brilliant -  a parts list with dimensions, thank you.

That's one of my "problems" out of the way so how about this one?

Recently acquired a BSA branded F12 Sloper minus recoil starter. That didn't bother me as I have both Siba and Norton Villiers units on the shelf but have just realised that whereas they are four legged, the flywheel housing of this BSA lump  has three equally spaced captive nut starter fixings. I can't recollect ever seeing a three legged starter on a Sloper and none of my F12 manuals show one, but they are all either titled Villiers or Norton Villiers. Were the three legged starters a BSA thing?

hortimech Sun, 10/01/2016

Short answer, yes

Long answer, yes a horrible, hard to repair bsa starter. When I started as an apprentice, one of my jobs, on a Saturday morning, was the repairing of starters that were offered on an exchange basis. I used to hate the bsa ones. A normal starter repair would take about 10 minutes, the bsa ones could take an hour, they would keep falling in bits or jamming when you tried to put them back together.

Take my advice, either throw the airshroud in the scrap, or modify it to take the later starter.

 

wristpin Sun, 10/01/2016

That is an option but I'm wondering if we are talking about the same starter.

This may help.
I'm attaching an image that I took today showing, on the left a Siba starter, in the centre a three leg Villiers one which does fit the Sloper in question and on the right the remains of a Villers four hole which is identical to the one on my Ransomes Twenty Four with a Villiers F15 and interestingly appears to be identical to the illustration in the F12 handbook; so have Villiers used the wrong illustration in the F12 book or were both three and four leg pressed steel NV starters used on the F12 Sloper.

Looks like the forum software wont allow me to add a pdf file so here's a Dropbox link instead!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xgpo0504fbs6cnv/Villiers%20and%20Siba%20recoi…

and finally, are any of these the same as the " dreaded" BSA  starter ?

 

hillsider Sun, 10/01/2016

It looks as though you may have had one of those eureka moments that we often hear about but never seem to have when needed. 

Whilst not particularly difficult to work on I have found that the Siba units can be a bit troublesome to get the pawls working sweetly.

While thinking of repairing recoil starters I have seen fully grown engineers suddenly become very busy or even disappear at the sight of a small engine with a broken recoil starter.

 

wristpin Sun, 10/01/2016

Rule of thumb.

The cheaper the machine, the nastier the starter!

League leaders at present; anything with a single bearing crank and the recoil on the drive side, especially if it starts Mc' !