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I found one and got all excited but the owner wasn’t interested in selling it.

Did some looking around in my shop and located the other O&R engine I have. This came off a Groomer trimmer. See the pics. It runs wide open all the time. It was built with a Tillotson HU that has no throttle shaft. Never had one. No choke either, just the primer button. The only thing to impede air flow into the engine is a screw that holds the base and reed plate in place. Installed a new diaphragms in the carb. I had this hooked up to a remote tank to run it. It sounds like an irritated bumblebee!

Courtesy of Webhead Arrived on Thursday, rebuilt engine and restored over the weekend. This is the first one of these that I had ever seen.

Here is what the Groomer Estate 400 in this thread would have looked like, sorry the picture isn't very good quality, I don't have any original documents for the majority of the AEP powered string trimmers. David

Yeah, Allstate gasket for the correct material but you'll have to buy a big piece. One already cut diaphragm is $10 with a new paper gasket or I can send you a small piece of material for $10 with a gasket if I can find a piece. You could also find a carb diaphragm for something else on ebay and cut it down to to size.

Think we hooked another one. Let the searching begin Half the fun is hunting is this down

I have some of the parts to the trimmer but not much. I have the aluminum intake tube that slips over the air intake adapter. Also a clamp that possibly held two aluminum tubes together. One was a fuel tank I'm guessing. I'd love to find another. There has to be one out there in good shape, or with a bad engine I could put my engine on.

The Groomer string trimmers (weed wacker) were made in the late 1970's by Advanced Engine Products Incorporated (formerly known as O&R), this was towards the end of AEP (O&R) as the company was dissolved in 1978. Hopefully someone will find a complete trimmer one day. As you've noticed the 13B427 is a constant speed engine using the Tillotson HU38A carb, this is pre-calibrated for constant speed operation only and has no fuel/speed adjustments. The added primer button is for easier starting and the extra tube to the crankcase is to pulse the fuel pump. I don't recommend looking at a standard parts diagram for the Tillotson carbs as they show all the bits not used on the HU38A, the diagram below is from the book "Small Air-Cooled Engines" 16th edition from Intertec Publishing, which has a small section for O&R/AEP engines, I don't want to add the rest as the current version of this book is still available and I don't want copyright problems. The air filter would have been on the end of the tubing that made up the pole & handle for these trimmers, the engine stop/kill switch would have been on this handle too. Some models had another tube with handle used as the gas tank and others had a gas tank attached to the starter housing. The trigger mentioned on the decal is indeed for releasing more cutting line on the trimmer head, they called this a "Touch-n-go" trigger. Other models had a "Bounce-N-Feed" trimmer head, this version released more cutting line when lightly bumped on the ground. David

That’s really cool! I have a similar model with the HU carb. I was able to find a carb kit on eBay. I haven’t tried to run the engine yet.

So between the two engines there were some good parts and bad. Had to dismantle both. The original engine sounded like it had sand it the cylinder , then in the crank case so couldn't use any of those internal parts. Then it turned out the crank on the other engine was worn. Had a groove from the points rod all the way around it. Found a good replacement crank and changed the whole thing. So I was able to get this far. Got a good engine together. And BTW, I hate those metal cages for the bearings. What a PITA they are to get back in. It's messy with all the grease to hold them too. It's been a long time since doing them but plastic cages would've saved an hour or two.

Nope. I must be the only one that doesn't have an issue with the plastic cages. Keep oil in the fuel and don't let it scream over 6300 rpm and it should be fine. None of my stuff are workers anyway so no big deal on the plastic cages.

Interesting! @Webhead Joe may be able to give some info on those carbs. I've never had one. Didn't have any knowledge about that tool either until now. Typically you won't need a choke if there's a primer button or bulb but going by the the decal, one would think the "trigger" is a throttle but... Guess the trigger was the kill switch LoL Yeah, they scream at 6300 rpm and without any load it will stumble a little. Too bad you don't have the rest of it.

So the gear box was little bit of a pain. Getting the gaskets right took some time and ended up cutting quite a few until it was right. (looks like someone threw confetti in my office now) A gear was rubbing on the metal separation piece then something was binding just a bit when all of the screws were tight. Nice and smooth now. This engine was done and gone through already because the gaskets looked new, inside was clean as a whistle and still some engine assembly grease noticeable around the bearings. Compression is so good there was a question whether or not to even open the engine but it was worth checking anyway. I must've quit at the gearbox because of the need for making gaskets as the gearbox definitely wasn't gone through before.

Hi all, thanks for the positive responses. Certainly a different way of working when producing scale models without plans or castings etc. Everything takes longer and a lot of thinking. Managed to reach a point of trial fitting the spray bar parts today which I've been working on for a while- I stripped the chrome off of a 60s car aerial section which was the right size in hard straight brass (5/32" or <4mm). I failed with reproducing the flanged connecting pipe, as it should be straight and I had to 'dog leg' it to line up. Probably as a result from having to work from a basic drawing for sizes of a similar make of cart. Still, it's a reasonable representation until I can get to M.E.R.L to inspect the company's original drawings. The retaining brackets were an excercise in miniature milling and retained with 12ba coach bolts/nuts- Time to start drilling loads of tiny holes............I may be some time !. Regards

They're bad. Especially the red one. Looks like they need the bad areas cut out and new material welded in. Or fibre glassing.

Got both of the fuel tank brackets finished and in primer today only thing left to do is flush the rust out of the tanks. Had a look at the two bonnets , I’ve kept moving them down the list as i new they were bad but getting to the point where I need to do something with them, not sure what yet I don’t think I’ll sand blast them yet.

Got tanked up today, found some off cuts of metal in stock so I’ve made two fuel tank brackets Think the photos show the process.

Last time I went to one of them places ( blue cross ) I told them to stick there dogs up there bum Andrew, they wanted to come round and inspect my house my garden and wanted me to fills forms in for background checks ,the dog I wanted got put down by them 2 weeks later because they could not find a home for it , never again, ime going to find a hunting fishing country type person that will find me a border terrier

This is the best i could do for now