Blue, are you sure the LV30s came from Kirby? If they did, I'd expect the manufacturer's plate to have James N Kirby on it, not Lauson. If the plate says Lauson, I'd guess that somebody - probably James Kirby - was importing the Lauson 3 hp engine in commercial quantities, before Kirby began assembling them locally under his own name. I hadn't heard before of that happening. The simplest explanation would be that Kirby obtained a concessional deal with the Tariff Board allowing him to import the engines while setting up his factory, but that's just a guess. If the plate says Lauson, anybody other than Kirby would presumably have had to pay import duty to bring them in, as they had to for the Briggs engines.
