Leaderboard

I spotted this little gem on Gumtree it few weeks back. It looks complete but it has not been ran for some two years. I spoke to the seller and a deal was struck. He was well chuffed that it was going to a collector and that sealed the deal. It had a new clutch on it a few years back and the seller repainted the bonnet. It need a new tyre on the front apparently. A mate of his will be delivering it to me from Scotland to Devon for an amazing £100 on one of his regular sorties into England. Here are some photos of it and it nice to see the centre cap on the steering wheel. Just heard from the seller that the cheque cleared and that it will be delivered sometime tomorrow evening. He also said that he put some fuel in and it fired up but was a wee bit smoky. Not bad after being laid up for 2 years. Looking forward to seeing it in the metal as it were. .

A guy had them at a swap meet I was passing by, I gave 10.00 for both

I bagsy first dibs on the one your going to sell norm

I know to a couple of examples but not many. The age is probably mid to late 30's. The colour of early Howard's is a bit of a controversy. The chap who restored these had been in contact with me for a few years prior to the auction trying to sell them( they cost x amount of thousands to restore so therefore they were worth this price in his opion) and he said that he found grey as the base coat. I've heard from a couple of sources that grey was used and even green before howard settled on orange. The far end one is a howard junior 5 imported from Australia ( I've still got this example) and the 6 is from the uk but I have scince moved it on as I needed the space and the money.

Cori like that is there still any around or have they all gone now, and why is it not orange and what age would it be

Yes, prior to the gem there was a v twin, I sure there was a jap and a British junior version. Attached is a photo of one in the 2013 tractor world auction were sadly I was the under bidder- but the I did purchase the 5 and 6 in the background.The really gutting thing was this twin had the engined removed for a motorbike and the remains sold on ebay later in the year.

Gareth did they do a v twin rotorvater

Been having a bit more of a dig through my archives today. This photo is the only period image I've got of these early type gems ( I guess with the war on there was more important things to photograph than rotavators). I believe this is probably of the prototype as there is no support for the rotor shaft on this side, in which case this photo will date from 1942. Due to shortages it's unusual to see a set of tyres fitted.

Todays job was to clean up the flywheel and fan shroud. Ive noticed in the past that war time Gems often had poor qualityfan shroud castings, probably due to shortages of good quality materials. As i'm aiming for a factory finish, I resisted the temptation to fill in the flaws.

It's like those chess games you could get where you played against the machine, you keep trying to plough a straighter furrow than your tractor and tomtom. Gives you a target to beat, especially if your'e playing alone. 🤓

Looks a nice bit of kit Andrew, well done finding one up there !