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Collection, Preservation and Display of Old Lawn Mowers

Atco B14 1970's

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Good Morning all, I recently (yesterday) bought an Atco reel mower. Paintwork and condition is a bit of a state, but she runs well and after all, it's a summer project...

First off there was no spark, seems some of the wires from the lead to the spark cap were frayed so after a bit of magic and a cut to size picture hanging nail, there is spark.

Clutch and drive all work well, some cables are in need of obvious replacement but nothing too arduous. 

I'm finding it tricky to date the mower though, it's certainly pre 80's i'd say, it has a grounding plate for shutting the engine off but apart from that the paintowrk is pretty bad i can't see any signs of serial numbers etc, granted todays job is to go searching for all that stuff. I'd love some help identifying the mower model and also the engine make and size, or if you could point me in the right direction that would be great! 

 

It has a metal clipings basket, and an open top spark plug. 

wristpin Wed, 06/05/2020

What you have was known as a De Luxe and they came in 14,17 and 20" widths of cut.

In your posted image look below the started recoil handle to the hex head screw holding the engine platform to the side frame. I think that I can see a rusty round disc. Clean it up and you may see a four digit number and part of that number will be 14 for the width of cut and the other two digits  the year of manufacture  - say 72 . 

One area of weakness on the original machines was the brackets into which the grass box legs fitted. they were not welded closed and often stretched and eventually fractured. On later machines they were welded closed which solved the problem. Worth doing if the machine is to be a user rather than a poser!

Early machines used BSF/BSW  screw and bolt threads and later ones UNF/UNC

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nt4es8krx5hsixl/Atco%20De%20Luxe%20Owners%20M…

Jonson Thu, 07/05/2020

In my experience they are nice machines, being quite compact for their cutting widths and easy to use. You have the tried and trusted Suffolk 75G14 engine, very straightforward, robust and with plenty of parts still available.

Regarding the age of the mower, if it's all original, 1972 is likely to be very close. The metal air cleaner and plastic recoil starter were certainly used together around this time.