OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions On Ride On Mowers Questions On Ride On Mowers Frames Help.... Mobilco ride-on

Thanks Grumpy,

I'm more than happy to assist anywhere possible. I am not of the throw away society, and strongly encourage restoration of rare machinery/items. Let it be known that if anyone would like to ask questions about restoration techniques, I am happy to assist.

brilliant resto!!!congrats

Fantastic stuff.

Wish i knew where i could get my hands on a few of those motors.
Or even a whole mower the same.

Awesome restoration, it came up a treat

Cheers
Shane

Thanks, got me all excited for a moment there! Thought someone might have seen one before.

Not that I'll ever sell it, rather curious to know what it'd be worth.

Ok, below is an email I recieved back from Ariens in America. I sent them the link to the post. Ummmmm..........

Greg

We have no records of our Emperor mower being relabeled under the Mobilco brand name.

It does look like an Ariens machine which we did make. All product from Ariens Company brought into the export market always had the Ariens name on it and not completely removed. We in the past did not sell our product under other names.

Daniel C. Haese



I have since found this picture of one, "Ariens by Mobilco". However the Mobilco logo in the bottom corner of the ad is similar to the logo on the latter ID plates I have, not the earlier plates.

The mystery continues........

Lost records perhaps?? Someone has to know something somewhere!!

Still doesn't answer the fact I've got two!!

Possibility 1: Ariens did not know that Mobilco was initially expunging their logos and only using their own (perhaps because the Ariens decal was taking up the very real estate where Mobilco wanted to put their own decal). Mobilco may only have done that for a short time, then stopped.

Possibility 2: If I recall correctly, there was no chassis ID plate on your mowers when you obtained them, but was there a plate earlier? In other words, are there pop-rivet holes in the vertical web of the frame rails, or wherever Ariens puts their ID plate? If the mowers originally had the Ariens ID plate, but no logos, that would meet the Ariens requirement that their brand not be expunged "completely".

Possibility 3: There was an Ariens decal on the machines when they were sold new by Mobilco, but it fell off or was removed subsequently.

Essentially, I doubt that Ariens had much knowledge, or control, of what their machines looked like by the time Mobilco sold them back in 1960.

That guy in your picture looks like he is setting out to mow the entire Nullabor Plain with a 20" mower. Lucky he's young, he could be out there a while.

Thanks, I've emailed him back with this picture anyway.

I was thinking that if it was just a decal, a decal on valuable realestate theres nothing stopping someone from putting their owan over the top of it.

It'd be easy to do that, granted, but when I restored it, (back to bare metal all over), there was no evidence of any other decals, colour, or postitions of ID plates. Pictures of the ARIENS model do not show ID plates where they are on the Mobilco.

The ARIENS model is predominately red.

Greetings, folks.
Outstanding restoration there, Greg. Very well done and documented.

Well, I'm a bit late to the party here, but can correct some erroneous info, at any rate. Background: My family had a farm/garden machinery business in the '70's and '80's, and were agents for Mobilco, among other firms.

Mobilco had no connection whatsoever with the Mobil Oil Co. The name was a contraction of the earlier 'Mobile Equipment Industries Co' name. I'm not familiar with the early history of the company, but by the 1970's it was a subsidiary of the Pizzey Limited Group. This was a publicly listed company, with operations in paint manufacture, leather manufacture/wholesale, and of course Mobilco.

Mobilco was a:
manufacturer - farm machinery such as grain augers, tractor carryalls , drain delvers, super spreaders, rotary slashers, swing saws, hay bale loaders/stackers; yard/block machines - the Heavycut slashers
assembler - the Emperor ride on and Jet tiller/rotary hoe, both Ariens sourced
importer - Bamfords UK hay machinery [rakes, mowers and balers]; Danuser US post hole diggers; Kohler US and Kubota Japan small engines; Kioritz Echo Japan chain saws etc.; and some earlier saw brands like Canadien, Tas, Mono and Be-Bo.

Most of the imports were rebranded as either 'Mobilco', or in joint names. 'Mobilco Yellow' was the standard paint colour for the machines made or assembled here; red was/is the Ariens colour.

I still have an ex trade-in 1970's Mobilco Echo 601VL chain saw, BTW. Still goes well, though I need to put a carby kit through it, when I get around to it.

Their main factory/warehouse was at the Whitehorse Road address, but they had country and interstate branches as well. We mostly dealt with the Shepparton, Vic branch.
Exactly correct on that one.

The connection there is that Ariens also made snowmobiles, using ILO engines. The later Mobilco assembled ride-ons had Tecumseh engines, but yours is probably an early model original. Tecumseh also produced 'modified crankshaft' engines for Ariens. I recall having to get a Briggs crankshaft machined to do an engine swap on one of these, after the original Tecumseh put a leg out of bed.

Mobilco changed from assembly to direct import of Ariens machines in the early-mid '70s, due to changes in import tariffs and exchange rates. It became more profitable to do that, and the import machines had a better feature set, and a much greater product range. For example, the higher-end Ariens tillers used a 'special' Tecumseh engine with an auxiliary PTO from an extended camshaft, which gave them power reverse.

The demise of the Pizzey Group came about because the asset value of the company far exceeded its sharemarket capitalisation [i.e. the total value of all of the shares was much less than the assets/properties would fetch]. So it came to pass that an 'asset stripper/corporate raider' bought up a controlling interest in the group in 1976, and it was all shut down and the assets sold off. Happened quite a bit in the '70's.

It was a bloody shame, because Mobilco was a very good company, with great people. I attended a few of the Echo service schools they ran.

There are still some 'Mobilco legacy' companies around though. Heavycut Machinery was formed by Mobilco's sales manager, who bought that part of the production machinery. And Allpower Industries was started up as 'Ariens Echo Australia', by former Mobilco managers. They would all be retired now though. Keith Billing was the last of the old crew.

Wow, thanks Gadge, I knew there would have to be someone out there that had seen one of these before! I know of a "Ariens by Mobilco" machine in Hamilton, Vic, and as I suspected, and said by you, is a later machine. Something I have omitted from the thread, is the rear tyres have the date stamp of "1866", so I know they were made in the 18th week of 1966.

Thanks.

Here's a little something I picked up for the Mobilco at Warracknabeal!

Rather happy considering there was about 150 entrants in the category!

Jolly good show.

Hi greg first all before i throw some fuel on the fire. i would like to say thankyou for all the info and pics u have gathered and listed here as it has made me become a member. Because like u i have been trying to find info on this ride on that i required a couple of years ago.

Well here comes the fuel for the fire. I seem to have according to the stamped serial number 525 model EM in orange with a Tecumseh engine? Which i am guessing is the next one of the line after yours.I will see if i can see a date on the tyres tomorrow. But i was wondering do u know how much this would be worth restorted? It is missing the mowing deck due the person i got it off took it off because his kids used it ride around the yard at there holiday house.

G'day folks,

I'll now lock this topic, as is the ODK practice.


If necessary, the topic can be unlocked by contacting a Mod.