My Mower again...

Well its been some time since I last talked about me mower...and now I am talking about it all the time!
Why you might ask? Well the local Express and Star newspaper has only been and done some features on old mowers...see everyone likes mundanery, and I have managed to get meself into the paper with a piccy of not one but two old mowers.
How mundane can I get? Well...lets wait a few months and see!
The mowers in question are "Puffing Billy" and "son of Billy?".

Billy senior, as you all know from reading the last blog about him, is a Qualcast 16 from around the turn of the war. I have spoke to my "ole man" at length and find that it was bought by him about 1963 and transported home in the front of his Moggy Minor (OUJ90, if anyone knows of its whereabouts contact me) having removed the front seat to get it in. He had bought it from TOC H (?) from around the Wollaston area of Stourbridge where it had been mowing the churchyard of a local church. It was sold because the people using it were frightened of it as it only had two speeds..."Quiet or noisy" Noisy being very fast and unmanegable! Hence the impending sale to my Dad for, he thinks, about a fiver...a veritable Queens ransom in those days with a seven year old lad, me, and a baby on the way...me sister!

Subsequent examination proved it was nothing more than a jammed, wrongly assembled, carburettor and it was soon weaving its magic on the family lawns billowing clouds of two stroke fumes as it went up and down. Hence...."Puffing Billy".

Over the years it has been repainted in a garish green, Dad's a touch colour blind and had a new set of chains. The clutch assembly for the actuating arm broke passing to close to the rockery some years back and had to have a new one fabricated from steel as the cast iron part was beyond repair. and soon it is to have the exhaust box repaired as sixty plus years of fumes have finally corroded it through. Not bad really for its age...its doing better than me!

Billy Junior...well what can I say about him? Not a lot really...given to me a few years ago by my next door neighbour. It in turn had been given to him by a relation many years before. It is an Atco with a fourstroke engine the same as seen on numerous Suffolk Colts from the sixties through to recent years. It has not seen much use as it is awkward to handle because the clutch is a weird affair with a combination of a lever about three foot long and a handlebar lever like a push bike brake lever. It wont roll backwards because of a dog clutch and although light and a very good cut is produced, turning around or backing out of borders is hence made quite difficult.

Would I swap either for love or money? Nah!!! These modern day mowers are pretty useless by comparison. If you can afford it they are not going to last if they are going to last they are just too damn expensive.

Hey Ho...such is life and the evils of modernisation...

More mundanery to follow...have a good life...
Moriarty...