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More of an RJ update for you chaps, let's have a look at the hood/bonnet shall we.. Interesting, a repainted gas tank with no fuel tap (Neil did mention it leaked ) and lot's of paint cleaned off the bottom! What's going on under (or is that above?) the tank? Soooooo... Someone has ground back the filler smoothing out the underside of the hood/bonnet to weld on new fuel tank straps! I'd guess when the hood was painted no tank straps were fitted.. It so happen that the strap welds are in the same place as the filler cracks above! Who ever did it thought something sucked as that's what it looks like has been written! No idea why when I upload this photo it turns it sideways! Oh, and the top of the tank never got painted! Out with the grinder and a workshop full of filler dust later it was good to see the rust was surface rust only, and only where the filler had cracked... And a random pop rivet! As the bonnet/hood has quite a lot of ripples under the filler, there was no point in taking it all out only to replace it.. So with the surface rust carefully cleaned back to bare metal the first layer of filler went back in.. Easy sand no pin holes filler eh! At least the easy sand bit was right.. No worries, a second skim will sort it. Meanwhile I catch Nigel dancing with some masking tape and a bench full of RJ parts! Some parts like the gear (I'm not sure it should be called that!) lever had never be repainted, so here it is with all the thick surface rust cleaned off awaiting some red oxide primer. Some parts in the "need to to have the paint flattened back to give the primer a good key" Que Some primed parts hanging about the place. The hood now looks good with a fresh coat of red oxide primer, I'm happy with the overall shape of my filler work, there's a just a couple of little spots that are annoying me.. I will sort them tomorrow.

A few photo's of the hood, fenders etc after they were painted Monday.. They be looking good

Here are some photos...

Paint chat now had, he (I keep going to call him her!) will look stunning with fresh paint. Glad you like the vid's, Part two will be along in a mo.. It's a shame about the cracked filler, but the rust has been caught in time before it chews holes through the hood.. Lot's of filler in it, but it had been done to a very high standard.. Just a shame about the bubbling. As promised here's Part 2 of the RJ Diaries..

And there's still room across the end wall for a bench and vice

Looks brilliant Norm. The boss must be pleased. An extra helping of brownie points. I'd forgotten about that rake.

I have listed a crawler on E Bay, it is a petrol MG40 with full hydraulics and pto, serial number 15343 so is one of the very last produced in 1965. It runs well but tracks need rebuilding, included with the sale is a full set of new rubbers bolts and track washers. Mag and carb have both been rebuilt.

A few weeks ago I got a call out of the blue saying would I be interested in this old tractor. My pulse quickened when he mentioned that it was hydrostatic and had 20 HP engine in it. I asked for photos which duly came a week later and my thoughts were confirmed. It was a Large Frame and both Chris and Iain identified it as a HT20. I have been told it is an early model. It runs and stops ok and come with a 56" deck too. There's a bit of tinware missing but otherwise it's solid. These are hard to come by ad I am chuffed to but that I got my hands on one. i

I took all the remaining parts to the shot blasters today..... Wheels were dismantled, cleats removed and straightened. The handlebars and remaining frame parts were also dropped off. Not sure when I will get them back though as his workshop had about 5 or 6 vintage bike frames and sets of wheels there, along with a whole inner wing and front bulkhead to a Willy's Jeep, the tunnel and floor and the rear bed section! there were also various alloy wheels and new massive hydraulic pump sections all awaiting his expert attention!

The shot blasting unfortunately is likely to remove the circle. When I first got interested in Villiers engines you could write to Ron Valentine at the factory and he would write back with the age of your engine. Unfortunately when they ceased trading around 2000 all the records went in a skip which I only found out about a few years later. A great shame.

The fuel tank is in a pretty sorry state Gareth..... The cap area is pushed down at an angle and yesterday I discovered it has a new use....... Sieve! I might have a look and see if its salvageable at a later date and anyways I have the tank that you sent me, I've got that stripped and in etch primer, just needs painting! The air shroud is at the shot blasters and has a liberal coat of red oxide and a later darker green on top of the original paint!

The other places that Villiers engines have dates is stamped very faintly into the air shroud near the spark plug hole and on the underneath of the fuel tank. Again it's a circle with the letters A.J.H be warned though these stamps are very faint and corrosion or damage can easily remove them. Carefully removing the paint with stripper or sanding will often show them up. J.a.p s before Villiers bought them out also had this stamp on them, maybe the same factory pressed up the shrouds for both companies?

Well that more painting done the night New levers arrived to day

I am pleased it arrived safe and it looks fantastic, thanks for posting the pictures. Give me a ring on Saturday if you and Chris need to compare anything with my HT20. Iain

Certainly looks good Andrew, I couldn't help noticing but the transmission oil filter looks like it has a hole in it? I'm sure you and Chris will have it off the pallet and up and running on Saturday

I thought Bolens was spelt :- B.O.L.E.N.S.? Not :- K.U.B.O.T.A.??

t's here but not without a bit of a kerfuffle!I got a phone call this morning saying he was half an hour away. Great I replied! Then he said "It's a big tractor and not sure how we are going to get it off..." "I am sure we'll manage" I replied.It arrived on time and with a bit of maneovoring and shunting the lorry reversed back to my lock up.He then revealed the tractor in all its glory which was strapped onto a pallet. The first problem or as some people like to say challenge was that the pallet was too wide to go through the rear so i quickly used my hand saw to reduce the width. This worked ok and we could just about get it on the tail lift.We then came across another issue. It was again too wide to go through my garage. I quickly thought I would roll it off and gave Chris a quick ring to ask him the procedure to release the valves to aid rolling. However, the seller have strapped the deck underneath the tractor and so we couldn't roll it even if we wanted to. ....By now the delivery guy was clock watching and I said let cut the sides again. This time speed was of the essence so I fired up my chainsaw and quickly sliced through the timber on both sides and after a couple of failed attempts managed to get it through the door and under cover. It was a great relief to get it in the garage as the driver said he was beginning to think he would have to leave it in situ if we couldn't get it inside. Thanksfully it's all sorted.Chris is coming over on Saturday and hopefully between us we can get it off the pallet ....Photos to follow but a quick glance around showed me it's a mightily sound tractor and with a good clean and a service will be a good one. Compared to the 850 in the corner, the HT20 is huge!

Have also stripped all the old paint off the gearbox and found the brass I.D tag under all the paint......... M4694! I have no idea how many were made and exactly how old this one is??? The engine, if it's original, has a brass flywheel.......... I couldn't see any numbers on it, but then I didn't look too hard?

That looks really nice mate, well done top job !

Nice job Norm I bet swmbo is happy👍🏻

Looks like you have done a fantastic job, it looks great. Amassing attention to detail on the outside woodwork. Iain

Bit of an update. She has now moved in and given it a name. The Hutch. Still some bits to do on the outside. Name plate up and the hay rake rescued from John's, painted and hung. The artist at work. The view from the door.

Oo , that's not pretty , filler looks quite deep , although I did know that there was some filler work on the hood .

yes ime going to give it a spray coat of paint neil cos the bonnets full of filler and rusted up its a shame realy cos the rest wasnt to bad , but you wont match it

Not sure if it was discussed with you guys but was there any talk in repainting said RJ ? Loving the vids

Looks as though it could br a combined centrifugal clutch and vari-speed pulley . There would be some sort of mechanism to take up the slack or apply tension to the belt to alter its position in the pulley to effect the change of speed, possibly controlled by the heavy cable and lever on the left hand handle bar. An image of what ever is under the guard on the left may give a clue.

Found this reference to them on line http://www.publicprocurementonline.co.uk/profiles/b/bitmen/

Hi Pat, I worked on one of these many years ago. I seem to recall that it may of been made by Stothert & Pitt? Had a lot of trouble stopping the carb leakin due to the angle of the engine, in the end I had o resort to a new carb for the customer.

It's a pleasure to be helping on such a machine Neil, a great bit of history with it too.. A "he" it is Ta for that photo Neil, it helped a great deal working out how the pulley system worked I'm not sure about the silver steering wheel though, what is the correct colour as I've seen em painted silver, black and red.. It didn't take long to get the belt guard and hood off.. The first job was to have a look at the engine, it has good compression and after a bit of plug and plug lead cleaning it has a spark I expect with a temporary gas tank fitted and a bit of move juice the engine should come to life.. Something to look forward to on Monday The engine pulley is not quite in the right place on the shaft, it should be closer to the engine.. Me thinks the pulley needs to turn a little on the shaft as well.. Having not worked on an RJ or any really early Wheel Horses before this er.. brassy bit on the back of the pulley confused me for quite a while until I worked out it's the reverse er.. cog In fact the whole drive belt system confused me for a while until I disconnected this spring and then everything fell into place.. With the RJ's engine having a good spark the time had come to look at the carb.. An interesting find behind the carb... Me thinks that gasket might be a bit small! Everything moved freely in the carb, so with a new gasket made (your see it in an up and coming video) the carb was bolted back on and a temporary fuel tank lashed up. A few pulls of the cord (steel cable in this case!) and the engine coughed into life and ran for a few seconds before stopping, which was just as well as the carb was leaking fuel from around the float bowl in vast amounts! Off with the carb again, ahhh there's the problem! As luck would have it Nigel had a spare carb which I could borrow to check out how the engine runs.. Thanks mate A few pulls of the cord later and the engine didn't start... One "big" pull later the pull cord came off in my hand but the engine did start, run and sounded very nice until it ran out of petrol and I gave myself a shock from the HT lead! All of which you will see in a video of course I thought I had snapped the steel cable pull cord thingy (I hadn't seen on either) until a saw how long it still was and checked the (not so) snapped end! As it turned out the nut that holds the end of the cable on was loose and the steel cable had simply pulled out! Phew While we have the pull start assembly apart let's turn it over and have a look..... What the??? Pull the cord and the center changes into a hexagonal shape! Which grips on a hexagonal shaft on the flywheel! I've never seen a pull start that works like that before... Me likes Then this happened This is a good point to put up a RJ Intro vid, the first part of "The RJ Diary's" should be up later today

Bit more done and new tyres on

Starting to look the part now, just got to do a little more tweaking on the lift mechanism and then paint it.