Jcorstorphine
Well-known member
Just been reading through an Austin Lifeboat engine manual dated 1944 which I bought on Ebay. Brings back the joys of simple engines as we had one in my fathers converted lifeboat which he bought in the mid 50s.
The engine had no electric start, no alternator or generator so the engine was hand start with an impulse magneto. Timing the impulse magneto was difficult as it would jump just as the contacts were opening so you had to time it backwards.. There was a rubber coupling disc which had gears on the face with 20 teeth on the magneto side and 19 on the engine side. This allowed the timing to be varied by ½ a tooth to give finer adjustment. When the engine would not start, the magneto was quite often taken home and put in the oven to dry it out.
The engine had side valves with little collets which slipped down into the sump if you were not careful. Gearbox was an epicyclic with three toggles to adjust forward and a brake band for reverse.
We spent many happy hours cranking like mad to get the bu**er started, sometimes with heating the plugs in the flames of the cooker and adding a spoonful of petrol to each cylinder. Quite often it would stop for no reason and would not start gain for an hour, other times it ran fine.
Eventually in 1960, having developed “Tennis Elbow” cranking the darn thing, my father splashed out and bought a brand new BMC Veddete engine (based on the Morris 1000) with electric start and a generator ………………….Bliss.
PS The new BMC Veddete engine used the same design of gearbox and reduction gear. All before PRM and the like were even off the drawing board.
The engine had no electric start, no alternator or generator so the engine was hand start with an impulse magneto. Timing the impulse magneto was difficult as it would jump just as the contacts were opening so you had to time it backwards.. There was a rubber coupling disc which had gears on the face with 20 teeth on the magneto side and 19 on the engine side. This allowed the timing to be varied by ½ a tooth to give finer adjustment. When the engine would not start, the magneto was quite often taken home and put in the oven to dry it out.
The engine had side valves with little collets which slipped down into the sump if you were not careful. Gearbox was an epicyclic with three toggles to adjust forward and a brake band for reverse.
We spent many happy hours cranking like mad to get the bu**er started, sometimes with heating the plugs in the flames of the cooker and adding a spoonful of petrol to each cylinder. Quite often it would stop for no reason and would not start gain for an hour, other times it ran fine.
Eventually in 1960, having developed “Tennis Elbow” cranking the darn thing, my father splashed out and bought a brand new BMC Veddete engine (based on the Morris 1000) with electric start and a generator ………………….Bliss.
PS The new BMC Veddete engine used the same design of gearbox and reduction gear. All before PRM and the like were even off the drawing board.
