Just got given a Victa-Pace with a Briggs and Stratton 375 Sprint engine smile

Bloke who gave it to me said it was dead, couldn't be fixed - at least not for a doable price.

Poor thing was terribly neglected - almost no oil - only about 50mls came out - and that looked like it had been in since new - spark plug was rusty!! Broken throttle cable.

He said it worked until about 1 month ago when it just stopped - took it to mower shop who said it wasn't worth fixing and promptly sold him a new mower!!

So he gave this one to me because he knows I like to play with them.

"This one should give you a bit of a challenge" he said - "The bloke at the mower shop said it would be a lot of work and a lot of money!"

As I bet you are all predicting - changed the Carby Diaphragm and Gasket and she fired up straight away smile

The "donor" was pretty pissed off seeing me spend all of 20 minutes and $9.90 to fix his unfixable mower!!

It was running, but a bit rough - it was OK, but I wasn't satisfied.

Checked it - the spark was mediocre, and seemed to be inconsistent.

Checked the coil - good.

Had a look at the magnets on the flywheel - quite a lot of rust covering the surface - sanded away all the rust on the magnets snd fired her up - beeeeeudiful!!!!

Running like a clock! And only takes a half hearted tug on the pull start to get it going. My girlfriend is my "tester" - if she can pull start a mower then it passes my "Easy Starting" quality control test - (poor thing - I make her test all my mowers smile ...and even she said - "Oooooo this one is nice - so easy to start" which pissed off the donor even more smile

Which pissed off the "donor" even more - Last I saw him he was heading off down to the mower shop with s garden knome and evil intent.


So:
1: New Diaphragm/Gasket
2: New Oil
3: New Spark Plug
4: Clean and Oil Air Filter element

Running really well - even the governor is behaving well.

I will put on a new throttle cable tomorrow.

I must confess to being a little confused as to why sanding the rust off the magnets made such a big difference. The rust shouldn't have really affected the magnetic field in any significant way. I've gotta have a little bit of a think about this.

Anyway...... now to my real question.

I'd like to give this fella a coat of paint.

What colour red did Victa use - check out the photos.

[Linked Image]
[Linked Image]

Is the White Knight Rust Guard "Fire Red" a reasonable match?? Or is there a better (ie: closer match) colour to use.

Once again - thanks for your thoughts.


Polybus