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hi all, new guy here. Recently bought this W11 gazelle on a lockdown whim. Was bought as a runner, but with faulty gearbox struggling to engage gears/reverse. Engine was spluttering, & deck isn't in great condition. Chap said it came with his house in 1991 from previous owners, and he has been using it ever since until it stopped reversing and couldn't get it fixed. Comes with 32" cutting deck (rotten but free moving) & rear wheel driven grass collector (working fine). If anyone could tell me the version i have here, that would be useful? Firstly i needed to make it drive. Inspected the gear linkages and found that the swivel where the shifting rod attaches to the box was siezed, so as it swung, the rod was bending. It had bent so much it no longer reached reverse. As i was disassembling it the rod snapped. My solution was to cut off where the thread started, dye it to 1.25mm pitch (and retap the swivel - were both 1mm pitch), then using some stainless steel bits rebuild it all. Now shifts into all gears without fault. Managed to snap the actual gear handle off too, so had to weld that back on too, plus lost the spring for the lift up reverse action. Not an issue to me. Next i looked at the engine. It was in a sorry state, covered in crap, and hadn't been serviced in this century. I stripped and cleaned the carb and air filter/box (looked like it had been dipped in grease), put in a new sparkplug, flushed petrol tank (sediment in bottom), and have started to clean the rest up.... starts and runs beautifully smooth now. this is far as i've got. Engine needs to be properly cleaned with scrubbing brushes which will then also have the black trim bits resprayed. I'm working on the deck currently, replacing blades, patching the deck, then will paint in something bombproof. Otherwise going for a different look, breaking tradition. I'm going to be stripping down the old paint and respraying gloss black, with metalwork gunmetal silver, putting LED headlights on, and chrome effect wheel rims. A friend is currently plasma cutting out some custom signage for it as i will lose the stickers. Figure its value is mainly in the fact it starts and cuts, any preservation is a blessing over its current state. Updates to follow....

Hi all, After a lot of trying to get the 1978 Gazelle's engine going, the best we could get it to go was Ok-ish, so I decided I'd put that engine on the back burner and use the engine from my other Westwood in this one (the engine Chris gave me! ), as the other Westwood is more custom anyway I was thinking about dropping a twin Briggs or something like that in it, and keeping this one mainly original. So I finished the job today of getting the engine in this one and it runs and drives great, lots of fun. Here's a picture of the mower and Saxon trailer. Soon I would like to get a new seat and perhaps replace the broken decals, but I like the patina so won't paint it, instead I used Owatrol Oil