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I got a copy over the weekend. Great picture of Chris (The Showman) with his Toro. It is a popular magazine in this part of the country, so I have told Joseph he needs to be ready to sign autographs now that his picture is in print Iain

Thanks! It seems alot of work has payed off in the end but being a 40 year old machine there are times where there's an endless list of things to do on it. Lol

Great video; you have done a nice job on the Westwood.

Hi, thankyou, would love to see some pics and videos of your Westwood, great to have you back on here.

Great video, it is really nice to see the mower in action. She's looking very good indeed for her age, very tidy underneath, and I understand you wanting to keep those stickers on as part of the mower's history. Sometimes I wonder about completely restoring/repainting mine, but then there is something quite special about an old machine that is preserved in a "used but not abused" state. Having said that, it's amazing what a difference a new seat can make to a machine.

While I was at Kingsfold last weekend I picked up this engine and just had chance to unload it. Its all complete apart from the air filter, has the wiring loom , solenoid, exhaust, starter and coil, it turns over with compression. dont know what it's out off but has an electric pto and the crankshaft sticks out of the wire screen. Comments welcome, here's some photos.

Just brought a copy of November Tractor and Machinery and there's a good write up about Rural Past Times. Heres some photos.

That's a configuration often used in heavier duty garden tractors such as JD, Ariens or Cub Cadet with a U/J off the back of the engine to shaft drive to the transmission and the drive to the deck via the electric clutch and one or two belts dropping down to a mule shaft under the chassis and a U/J and short shaft to the deck.. However the position of the fuel tank looks a bit wrong for that application.

Great coverage of a good event; I must get a copy of it too.

A close friend of mine sold me his 1953 Ford Jubilee tractor and brush cutter for the sum of 1 dollar and further consideration in keeping him in fresh vegetables. I didn't know it at the time, but next week he is also bringing me a Cub Cadet 1650, and 1250 with a rotovator and cutting decks, along with an old Allis garden tractor, all stuff stored in his shed for many years. The second garden planting is producing massive amounts of squash, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, okra and melons. The sun room has a new door and all windows are sealed up ready to be a winter greenhouse and solar heat for part of the inside. I cut up a giant maple that fell in a storm and got most of the wood split. I have 10 feet of 48" diameter trunk left. My Friend Ralph came over and wanted a picture of him in front of the large piece of wood I had placed upon the wood splitter. He does this often, comes over and puts on work gloves then wants me to send pictures to him that show him working, notice he is on the wrong side of the splitter to work the hydraulics, strange fellow. I think he is an actor in life, he never really does anything, nice guy, but you cant count on him. My 1982 Homelite 410 with 68cc and a 24" Oregon bar cut through that tree like it was shrubbery. I will have to break out the 110cc Homelite Super 1050 with the 30" bar for the rest of the trunk

I took my mate a 16 foot trailer full of split wood (2 ricks)to his house besides what I've kept, looks like about 5-6 ricks off this tree when all said and done.

Thanks Norm, it's good to have it driving after all this time. Soooo, what does it drive like? Well, very good as it happens.. MadTrax feels very stable and planted with not even a hint of "it's going to topple over" Oh, and it's fast... In high ratio of course.. Trying to work out the gearing is impossible, so I'm going to guess it will top out about 80mph.. Not that I fancy doing that sort of speed on a quad of course Off road it's just as good, it feels almost unstoppable. Rob and I were testing it by driving across deep ruts back and forth.. Eventually it started spinning the rear wheels, flick the switch to 4x4 mode and it pulled it's self out straight away.. Amazingly despite the testing abuse nothing broke! Me happy with that A few minor little problems to sort.. During the off road testing MadTrax did get rather hot, in a "needle in the red" sort of way! Part of the problem was an airlock in the cooling system, of course the highest point is where the temp sender is! As the water level in the expansion tank is no longer dropping I guess all the air has gone out the system.. The other part of the problem is while riding MadTrax, the engine is at high RPM but the quad isn't moving that fast to push cold air through the rad.. So I have got an extra cooling fan to fix to the outside of the rad, it should help things out.. One thing the engine is doing that I wish it wouldn't is it's running very rich! The carbs have already been cleaned out, so a bit of carb tuning and balancing will be done when MadTrax goes back together.. I did try and get some off road video footage, but for some reason I was having a bad camera day and didn't notice the camera was already recording.. So when I hit the "start recording" button to film the action, I was actually stopping recording! The end result was I had mostly footage of "the bits inbetween" rather than the action! No photo's other than this screen grab of MadTrax ripping up the grass.. The smoke is from the over fueling! MadTrax is now back up on the bench ready to be pulled apart tomorrow or Friday. Lot's of bit's to be "fully welded up", and painted.

Well done guy's, as Head Exam say's, "Very Deserving"

Very deserving.

Haven't got any pics of the whole unit, it's in bits. I'm head down dealing with the engine assessment (when I'm not prepping the C-120 for sale). If it can't be bought back to life, then it will just be large boat anchor, or garden sculpture potential. The latter was the case for many years, hence the corrosion. The Magneto is clean as it was covered from the elements. Highly unlikely to get a spark out of it. Confirmed the engine date is 1922 with the serial letter/numbers and only have a couple of reference shots of the engine for what they are worth-

Unfortunately not, I believe our gas contains 5% ethanol and today's petrol is pretty horrible stuff. I have just had to rebuild the carb on my G10 as it had gummed up the carb after sitting for just 3 months.

For general maintenance 1 ounce per gallon is fine, but to clean a heavily varnished or dirty carb I would either buy some of the spray and spray directly into the carb. The engine will try to die so, 2-3 second squirts is all you will get while the engine recovers, 7-10 squirts of Seafoam will remove much varnish and deposits. Another method is to add 3-6 ounces to half a tank and run it empty with this mix. B&S fuel fit is a petrol stabilizer more like Stabil, Seafoam is a cleaner/stabilizer. I only use pure gas, no ethanol and a fuel stabilizer is not necessary for that product. ethanol lace petrol will congeal to a caramel like substance in carburetors after time and clog passageways, Seafoam will remove that, most fuel stabilizers will not. I believe you blokes are able to get pure gas over there, is that so?

The engine may sort out on its own with a little more use and clean petrol, may want to use a fuel system cleaner a well.

Pictures after work carried out -

still no engine yet. Waiting for the new cylinder head but had to make a start at new lights for the rear

I bought another Bolens, this time a 850 with a deck from Hampshire. Date yet to be verified but it from the mid to late 60s. I was particularly attracted to the go faster blue stripe on the bonnet. Also it's nice to have a different front decal of the Husky Man and not the Husky Dog on the front. The engine require some pistons and hopefully it will be up and running again. Thanks to Chris for collecting it and storing it.

If you can get me the sizes of the pulleys (bore, height, width of V, diameter, pictures would be best with measurements) I can cross reference them to part numbers you can use locally. The part numbers used by Westwood unfortunately aren't the same as used by the pulley distributor/manufacturers .