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Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

LIGHTWEIGHT

Many manufacturers made mowers described in the advertising literature as "Lightweight" machines. Best known are the range of mowers made by ATCO in the mid to late 1930s. These followed on the tradition set by the "Standard" and the "HY", being mowers made for the smaller suburban garden. Side plates were used, unlike the "open frame" construction of the earlier mowers, and the petrol tanks were mounted transversely and not "in-line". A variety of Villiers engines were used, mostly housed in an aluminium fairing, and in some machines a "kick-start" was introduced for the first time. These "Lightweight" mowers paved the way for the "kick-start" mowers by that company so popular after World War 2 and into the 1950s.