On my way home from work, I managed to pick up a Tornado classic from a council cleanup pile. I thought about whether to take it, as I already have a VS160 long shaft waiting for an alloy home, but grabbed it anyway.
So, the base is shot. holes through it everywhere, and the wheels are stuffed. However, everything else looks to be in good order, so at the very least I have a spare of most things now enginewise should I choose to just keep it.
I did start the engine, and it went second pull. No problems.
However, just for the hell of it, since I have an alloy 18 inch deck sitting here;
What are the steps in putting a long shaft powertorque engine on a normal height victa 18 inch deck, and what would be needed to make it work? Obviously it would need to sit on something to prop it higher on the base, but wouldn't this impact on the bolts attaching it to the base? Would they be long enough?, otherwise the blades will be lower than the mower, and then there is the height adjustment side of things to take into consideration.
Can it be done? If so, is there a dummies guide out there?
Hi Sapper, If you lift it the muffler will be above the slot in the base as it needs to be lifted 20mm. Yes you will need longer bolts. The spacers from a Briggs fitted on a Victa base are the correct height, but you would need 4 of them because the PT has the 4 mounting bolts. The bases on those Tornados are a disgrace
Bit of a painful operation, but doable with the right bits and pieces. Makes me think, what was the most important consideration when they built these things? It almost seems like Victa built the engines to fit the base, rather than the other way around. Very strange...must have been an offer they couldn't refuse.
I haven't looked at the bottom ends of these in great depth yet, but I don't suppose it is possible, or at least trouble free enough, to transplant a crank from one of the dead normal size PT to one of these. That might be a better solution?
Sapper, This was done so they could use the Briggs motors or the PT's on the same base without the use of a spacer ring, which they had used forever on the 18 inch bases with a 4 stroke fitted. Swapping the cranks over is a possibility but something I have not tried. I have so many standard crank motors I will probably never use them all. And then I have about 40 sitting there that I believe have been straight fueled and I haven't looked to see if any could get away with a hone and a new set of rings. Probably never get around to that either
Norm, I get it now. So the 4 strokes were now taking precedence with Victa, and they made the bases to suit. Does this mean that all of the newer PT engines from about '04 are long crank? If not, did they start using the spacers for the 4 stroke engines again?
That is quite a horde you have there. If you tore them all down you would make a small fortune flogging off the parts.
Sapper, The whole lot is not worth much. It was only the Tornado that I know of used the long crank with the 19 inch base. The 18's continued on using the spacer and then a year or so ago the new bases started appearing that the PT won't fit once the PT was deleted and only 4 strokes were being produced
Alternatively, could one of these nuisance long shaft PTs be adapted to fit a Masport, Rover it any other make? NormK didn't you say before that the main obstacle to fitting a regular PT to another brand was the shaft is too short? This might be an opportunity to be able to fit this engine into a better quality base with a dead four stroke.
I saw this Razor in the Powerhouse Museum collections and it appears to be an alloy base. Does this take the longer shaft PT?
Now that is a reasonable thought I had never thought of MF....could be a great answer you have there for the other brand bases! If Norm or any other the other veterans could look into this, it would be great. I have two of these things, one of which needs a transplant, the other in the waiting list, so if it was possible to use a different mower base, that would open up the field nicely. A Masport with the PT? The possibilities could be endless, haha, fingers crossed.
As for the Razor, I would think it fits on the same steel and alloy decks of the new Victa 2 strokes. The Razor also came with an alloy blue deck, same as the hammer tone alloy decks of the mustangs (and looks the same as the decks used on all the new 19 inch stuff nowdays. I will have to get my bum to a mower shop with plenty of stock and check whether they still have the PT muffler cutout).
As for fitting a long shaft PT to other bases, it can be done but the problems that arise make it just not worth the effort. The 4 stroke holes don't line up with the PT. If you look at the PT bases many are multi drilled to take either the 4 stroke or the 2 stroke, some are just drilled for the PT. Rover type alloy bases have a step up for the motor mount bolt holes, this just makes it too difficult. It is difficult to get the holes in the correct position even if you use the cover plate from the underside of the PT motor. Getting it to set up so that when the top cowl is fitted it lines up square and not kicked sideways. Sounds simple to set up but it isn't, you have nothing square in the first place to work with. Then the muffler doesn't go down through the deck so it blows smoke all over the front of the deck and makes a mess. Then there is the issue with the height adjuster bar which requires a big step in it to clear the head. On the Victa bases the height adjuster bar steps down in the chassis and goes under the head. Been there tried all those mods. MF, there is a Razor on gumtree for $20 I have bought a few mowers from him but it is a long drive and I'm not sure I could be bothered for one mower. Just looking at the link you posted that will be a short shaft motor just going by the skirt depth. I still believe the Tornado was the only long shaft PT motor
Thanks NormK. I have seen pics of PT fitted to other mowers but no idea how well they worked.
It would be nice if someone could develop a kit to adapt this long shaft motor to various makes of base as the bases are going to fail well before their motors and we'll have a glut of them still with good compression.
The Masport steel deck I threw away was vastly superior to Victa -,except replacing the wheels!
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
MF , the only motor that will fit the non Victa bases and how many of those are there out there. Sapper pretty sure the PT motor will fit on these Rover bases as they are multi drilled, they just don't have the support for the 4th bolt on the PT, not that I think it is that critical On this base it clears the height adjuster bar, the only issue I see is the muffler not going through the base but a bit of modification to the muffler might overcome this problem
Don't think I have a good longshaft motor here at the moment, that was just to see if it would work ok, and then there is the issue I have with limited Rover catchers. I have at least 40 Victa bodies here that are rust free so I am not looking for alternative bodies to fit PT's to
It would be interesting MF, but the whole thing is a pain really. Some bright spark in Victa started the whole long shaft motor, only for a cheap steel deck (if Norms hypothesis is correct regarding the alloy bases of the time having regular shaft PTs, and he has a lot my experience than me at estimating what a deck would take looking at a picture of it), which makes my old plan of transplanting them a pita. I will keep them around and see what I can think of, but whoever thought this crap up at Victa deserves a good kick up the bum.
I just opened my Tornado up for an inspection of the crankcase to see what she looks like after 14 years; Spotless. The piston and bore are almost shining, and carbon? Zero. Makes the other motors, which are in pretty good nick admittedly, look like junk. And the poor thing is stuck on the worst Victa base.
Sapper, One option would be to press the center of the blade carrier down 10mm and then you would only need to space the motor up 10mm so the muffler would still be entering the base. Otherwise just lift the motor 20mm and see what you can do about extending the exhaust down with maybe a sleve in the base hole
Hi Sapper, That is the spacer ring the 4 strokes use but it is no good for the PT application because the hole spacing does not fit the PT. There is a plastic ring that has 3 steel spacers clipped into it. I have a number of those but Aus Post will never get another cent from me posting things because they are just thieving bastards.Without the ring it will leave a gap but it won't cause a problem, might just let a bit of grass through
