OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Finding and Swapping Rare Finds & Donations Eric Anderson Mower

Thanks Norm,

I had pretty well figured as much and been perusing the thread chart on the wall at work. With spanner sizes I hope they don't use crazy dimensions like 13/64" and the like. Thought the AF imperials would fit.


No worries Kye, I understand the value in conserving Eric seeing as we don't seem to have another.


Hi Jack,

Yes the colour sche!e was almost 'meant to be'. I measured up the clearance between the handle base and when at Bunglings looked for a box (with the trusty tape measure) that would fit. Lo and behold, the orange crate/bin was just the right size, right colour and right price! My daughter even liked the colour!! If necessay I can actually bolt the bin to the engine mounting ring, just need some holes in the bin's base.

The garden ornaments were here when I arrived and are very interested in anything new that appears in 'their' domain. They may yet do more inspections.

I did notice Rota-Rola's gnome fan club too!

Patrick, a mix of A/F and Metric sockets will sort of fit but if you are serious about working on this old stuff you really need a few Whitworth sockets and spanners. 3/16, 1/4 and 5/16 Whit. 1/4 is the most common on these type of mowers

Those turn out to be 'Philidas turret nuts', which are still made by the original company in the UK; http://www.philidas.com/

The Whitworth hex sizes follow a unique dimensional progression, which doesn't fit in with either of the AF [SAE or ISO metric] systems. Part of the reason for this, is that Sir Joseph Whitworth's system was the very first designed, standardised fastener thread and hex system to exist - he introduced it in 1841, under the limitations of the materials and available bar stock sizes of the time.
Some of the history: http://www.enginehistory.org/british_fasteners.shtml

And then we can get into threads where Villiers were such a big organization that they decided to make their own thread sizes in house now called Villiers threads. Enfield in India were still using this thread till 2008, they just followed on from when Enfield England used this thread in the 40's and 50's

I haven't encountered that with Villiers, but they had the choice of the more obscure Brit threads, such as BSC [Brit Standard Cycle], its predecessor 'Cycle Engineers Institute', and of course BSB [Brit Standard Brass].

Wouldn't surprise me if they used a few of those here and there; they certainly did use BSC on engines.

A few machine manufacturers deliberately used only proprietary threads - Singer sewing machines are probably the best-known example, in their older models. Engineers of old termed them 'SBC' threads - Singer Bastard Cross!

And Enfield - your mention of them reminds me of the Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, who were notorious for using bastard threads. Have look at the listing HERE.

They also used two different inch standards - the Enfield Inch and the Imperial Inch, which are 0.0003" different...

Thanks Norm and Gadge,

I'll investigate Whitworth tools through the techs at work tomorrow. Already seen the (old) screw/bolt sets.

Why not just get a set of Metrinch. They grip the sides just past the points. They are a universal fit and suit metric and imperial. I would expect they would have to work on anything.

I haven't really looked around for Whit spanners recently and the only place I have seen them is from India

Head to the sunday market. If you pick through the second hand tools old blokes sell you will quite often turn them up.

I bought myself a nice little Kirby KV-30 today. Has a Turner tag on it, possibly of the Turner version of the Eric!
Also got a nice Victa BP tin and the Pace hubcaps I needed for my Pace Super.

Expect another "this weekends scores" post tomorrow afternoon or tonight, I am picking up a mower I have been waiting all week for that I am sure you will all like.





I can't work out how to make images straight, no matter which way I hold the camera it never ends up right on ODK. The second image doesn't have the Pace hubcap since I had already put it on my Pace when I tried to re-take the picture.
Thanks For Reading!
Kye.

Hi Kye,

Wow! I don't know how you find these things so efficiently, well done!

And thank-you for the heads-up on the gasket set, it has now arrived safely.

We had that exact mower can when I was young.

If your photos are on a camera/PC (like me) I can help, but if they're on your phone that can be more difficult as they're all different. The phone often tries to detect which way is up, this works for straight horizontal/vertical but hold it at a diagonal angle and it can get confused. There may be an 'auto-rotate' option to turn on/off. These will generally only do 90� increments. Otherwise you may need (or have) a simple photo editor built in that you can use to force a rotation (and cropping) before uploading.

The Lauson one's pretty straight.

I tend to download my photos to a PC, crop, rotate (often by 1-3�) and reduce them before uploading. Tedious, but allows those strange 60's-movies-type angles to be corrected!

Cheers,

My problem seems to be when I upload them to ODK, they are straight until then.

Hi Kye

It is more likely to be what you are uploading them from.
From a PC it should work fine (as Patrick says).

-------------------
Jack

Eric's Bucket list
I had plans to dismantle the Corvette/premier 160 on a sunny Canberra autumn afternoon, but with my head spinning like a top from some virus all I could manage was a late afternoon upgrade for Eric.

Eric continues his current sojourn as a garden assistant. With bucket-mounting V0.1-Alpha looking decidedly untidy, I decided to upgrade to V1.0Beta- a tidier, sounder fixture by using some stainless pan-head screws, nuts and washers through the original engine bolt holes:


The reason they're not centred in the bucket is 'cos the engine mount isn't centred in the mower base- it's further towards the front and the bolt holes may be slight offset/unevenly spaced too. But it appears rock solid so version-Beta may actually be a release version.

So with fading light I was able to take one evening shot of the bucket's new, stable mounting. Ready hopefully to be put into action tomorrow for autumn's fertiliser round!

Cheers,

Looking good Patrick, I should get all my mowers out this afternoon for a sunset shot, would look great with the mountains in the background.



Grass is mowed now the that rubbish in the background has been taken to the dump so this time it can be perfect! Unless it rains....

Thanks For Reading!
Kye.

That's a bloody nice backdrop you've got there Kye.

Brilliant!

I love both photo compositions.
The children's book would be titled "Eric & his Garden Friends".
What shenanigans they get up to after dark!

Great lighting in Kye's 'Pacemaker' photo too.

------------------------
Jack

There was a short lived kids TV program about Larry the Lawn mower. He had several friends one was Tangles the hose. (I have young kids)

Thanks Slash, before my dad cut all the trees down it was just forest. Lighting looks great in the afternoons!

Eric in more fertile (actually, fertilising) pastures...
Eric meets Osmocote. With Eric and my daughter's help, the autumn fertilisation round has been done. A bit of rain and everything'll go nuts (for Canberra) over the next month or two.