Has anyone else ever come across such a tool/machine? I bought this decades ago, it was fitted with a Lawson two stroke engine, made under license from Aspera, which had a reed valve induction between carb and bottom of crankcase, I tried to get new reeds for it for years, but failed, I saw many, but none were exactly the right size and bolt hole placings.
I googled it, the mark two version with four wheels as opposed to my three is still being sold.
Cannot say I ever came across your particular machine, but worked on various Turfco machines. I must correct one mistake you are making, Aspera made engines under licence from Tecumseh and Lauson was a part of Tecumseh.
Thanks for replying hortimech, I always thought that the Italian Aspera company was the original and the American Tecumseh was a different concern that took them over? Fiat bought out Aspera I thought also and renamed it Tec or Tecnamoto or Tecnamotor?
I worked for my local agri/horti machinery dealer for a while, but received no factory training or manuals, partly why I left! Being on the periphery of the trade when I was about 20 was a long time ago when I started my own two businesses in 1988! Many interesting stories to relate if I'm allowed to, no names mentioned, so no feelings hurt I'm sure.
From my knowledge (which isn't always correct), Aspera was a joint concern between Fiat and Tecumseh, but was run as a separate company and built the engines under licence. Sometime during the late 80s, Tecumseh bought out Fiat and renamed the company to Technamotor (around the same time, they also bought JLO and moved everything to Italy, never to produce any engines). Technamotor limped on for a number of years before finally ceasing production in Italy, Tecumseh carried on production in America until about 2010, when production of engines ceased, virtually overnight. Last I heard, a company bought Techumseh with the intension of producing spare parts and possibly engines, don't think anything came of the engines.
Now for a question, Tecumseh produced engines for Toro rotaries, the TNT100 & TNT120, what did the 'TNT' stand for.
Toro aNd Tecumseh ?
Very close, but you have to remember we are talking Americans here, it was ToroNTecumseh.
Actually the Tecumseh / Aspera story is even more convoluted. The original engines were made by the Lauson company who sold the manufacturing rights to Tecumseh who were manufacturers of refrigeration and air conditioning equipment. Then there was the Aspera / Fiat tie up and finally the return to the Tecumseh fold as Tecnamotor. As an aside, before Lauson sold out to Tecumseh they had done a licensing agreement with the Kirby Manufacturing Co in Australia who made engines under the Kirby Lauson brand. The Kirby engines were found in the UK on the original yellow deck Flymo Contractors, on the first Mountfield M1 cultivators and on some Mountfield four wheeled cut and drop rotary mowers - I forget the model numbers.
After disposing of engine manufacturing, Tecumseh have continued with the refrigeration and air conditioning business.
EDIT
The final chapter
Thanks for the update.
I am rather embarrassed now after all the Aspera/Tecumseh/Tecnamotor talk, to find the engine on this machine is a Clinton! Apologies to anyone who feels I wasted their time or patience here.
It's more convoluted than that, whilst I wasn't aware of the refrigerator side of Tecumseh, I knew that it was built from the purchase of other companies. Lauson was (from my understanding/memory) the 4-stroke base of Tecumseh, but the 2-stroke engines were based around the engines from Power Products. Now taking that the Kirby Lauson, Aspera AV600 and Tecumseh 2-stroke engines were very similar, I think that we can assume that they were all based on the Power Products engines, so this blows a hole in Wristpin's suggestion that the Kirby Lauson engines were made under licence from Lauson, more likely from Tecumseh.
As for Clinton engines, I never really had anything to do with them, if I recall correctly, they went out of business sometime in the late 70s and never really had much of a presence in the UK.
May be, but before sinking without trace , Lauson used the name Lauson Power Products before their acquisition by Tecumseh. However, I’ve now found that Kirby , like Tecumseh, were manufacturers of refrigeration equipment - coincidence or what?
I should have added Victa as a user of Kirby Lauson engines including ones with the infamous wind up “coffee grinder starter.
Clinton. Were distributed in the UK by Trojan of Purly Way , Croydon; perhaps better known for their snub nosed diesel vans ( many in Brook Bond Tea livery) their own garden tractors and Lambretta scooters. However Clinton’s were used on the early UK built Karts (Go-Karts) in the late 1950s ; often in pairs. They were also used on Ransomes Mercury cylinder mowers and on Merrytillers.
I've noticed that the reeds and reed cover are held in by steel or ally rivets, not screws as I thought.
There are a few new parts I need for these engines still in the USA, £8 for a reed seems reasonable, but £12.84 postages sounds a bit off, air mail I suppose, but there's hardly half an ounce in weight there?
The steel reed cover piece is about another £6, but is being sold by another seller, so another £12.84 needs to be found for that, plus rivets of course. A new gasket (from another seller!) might be worth ordering at the same time, but at this rate, a small handful of parts will add up to more than the machine is worth.
I went at it a slightly different way next, the complete reed assy. including the ally body casting is about £26.84, a new gasket from another supplier will add two lots of airmail postage though.
The problem is that I need to make a decision soon, before parts are ended or find I cannot purchase any, a slightly more positive thought is that I have thousands of small ally rivets and USA was then still imperial measurements. The old ally casting gasket is still good too I suppose...decisions, decisions.
I've just paid £20 for a roughly inch square piece of steel shim stock! I have no way of knowing its thickness though and am not the sort of chap who enjoys spending a dozen hours rebuilding and dismantling an engine ten times in experimenting with various thicknesses in a vain attempt to 'save' time and money!
I will have to try making the 'stop', which is a much thicker piece of steel of a similar shape that goes over the reed itself, but ha an upward bend in it, first allow the reed to open on induction, but only so far, the natural spring in the reed coupled with the primary compression pressure snaps the reed shut.
About £8 for the reed, the rest is postage from the USA.
But firstly, I need to find out if trhe crank will move, that white puffy ally oxide appears to have locked the shaft up, but where there's a will etc.
Then there’s the possibility of import duty - Lawnmower parts 3%, clearance charge by Royal Mail or Parcel-force, with VAT on top of the lot.
Occasionally but rarely it will slip through without, but it’s a roll of the dice.
Thanks for your helpful comments wristpin, appreciated.
I had a look at the two stroke engine the other day for something positive to do, was vrery disappointed to find crank locked up!
Whether it was big end or piston/bore, I wasn't sure, but that white puffy ally oxide had me thinking even main bearings/bushes/crankcase journals might be affected too. First job was to blast out as much of the oxide as possible.
Engine is now free again, I used to buy two gallons of the lubricant/water displacer fluid a year at about £15 a gallon, much cheaper than those silly little spray tins at about a quid each.
There's so much compression now that I had to remove the plug to turn engine over. Still awaiting the reed valve part.
Luckily, I didn't have to pay any excess postage costs, but thanks for the 'heads up' comment wristpin.
A bit warmer today, so slipped into my shed and did a few bits and pieces which also helped my sanity!
Basically cleaned the housing and made a reed movement limiter/cover plate, found a couple of fine UNF screws to hold it all down with, fitted loosely and was happy to see big end and crank missing the protruding 'fingers', even connected governor rod to carb. and noticed noise from vane assy. too.
Other way up.
The machining isn't of very good quality around the swirl type passages.
00 or 000 gauge wire wool helps a lot.
Tried the reed in both ways up, tightly shut seemed the most likely, thanks to others' comments.
I'm sure I put all the fasteners and maybe the original reed stop in a bag somewhere in the shed, but I cannot find them now, I put it all back together minus fasteners as a mock up and all seemed fine.
Just the carb to strip out and put through the ultrasonic cleaner before the rebuild now, oh, and maybe a check for a good spark too, might not go amiss.
Spent another couple of hours in the shed today, had my little greenhouse electric heater going on the bench, plus my gas bottle wood burner too, so not too bad. I firstly bolted the reed block on.
I had to find the right Whitworth screws as originals are lost.
I will have to make an air filter for this engine.
No spark either, so off with the flywheel, after finding the correct knocker for the job.
Knew I had carb. gaskets too somewhere.
I trial fitted the fuel tank, only to find two of the cowling screws were shared by some tank mounting holes, I then found after removing them, that there was no way to even get the shared lower tank mounting holes aligned because they were already filled by two of the reed mounting block items, so I had to remove the carb. again to fit the tank, the awkwardness told me that fitting a new piece of clear fuel tubing now would be a good idea, which I did, to the carb. end.
I had a job to see the inner carb. mounting, let along get a washer and unf nut onto it.
I finally managed to get a washer on using long nosed pliers, but a nut and then tighten it up?
Went back to the container and found more parts, this is the main drive sprocket which fixes onto the gearbox output.
I next used much longer bolts and enough spacers to bring engine out about two inches, one wasn't enough.
Engine needs to sit like this, for carb. and float etc. to work properly, but getting it to mount like this and engine not foul the wheel etc. seems almost impossible. One screw head is red, not much significance in tyhat surely.
I don't understand the 2 over 1 and the 4 over 1 (red) references, not the red screw head surely, or maybe red oil of some kind?
The rear wheel was now fouling the cowling.
Useless.
With a fully pumped up compressor at 150 lbs per square inch, it took releasing fluid and three attempts with half inch impact wrench to get the self locking nut to come off that held the wheel on, once off though it was slightly lighter, I did think about removing the handles assy. too, but didn't. Another idea was to lay engine down on the pull starter side and then lay the frame onto it, but then I could see nothing, bench was better than working on the floor, handles then managed to send greenhouse heater flying to the floor, some jobs need two people...engine is one thing, trying to remember exactly where everything went is another.
I'm still bewildered by this machine, today the only other way to go forward I felt was to remove again the cowling, carb, fuel tank etc. in an attempt to see just where or what was fouling the engine/frame going back together, a small clue was noticing only a very small gap between the mounted fuel tank and the gearbox housing, whereas the full eighth thickness of the frame metal needed to be inserted between, I believe.
But, even with all that lot off it was still a hard struggle to be able to see what was holding things up from both sides of machine. Still no holes properly lining up and still no idea whether or not any spacers were used between any corresponding holes on engine/frame.
All I could think to do was put engine all back together once again and get some fuel into it and mounted in vice jaws, see if it would start up or not, oil seal one side is covered by gearbox housing, I forgot to check the other on ignition side.
Three good pulls later she burst into life!
A further setback is a leak from float bow/tap/tank area, got rid of the WD40 I'd introduced into crankcase and half filled the shed with smoke, she ran for three ten to fifteen second sessions, so at least job is still worth pursuing.
One thing I forgot to mention before is the operating method an eccentric spike on the end of gearbox shaft sits inside the 'U' formed by the shape of the structure of the operating arm, which in turn is caused to vibrate back and forth, that's about all that happens really, except of course there is a power take off to the large sprocket which engages one wheel by friction, upon engagement via the lever provided on the handlebars area.