Very old Briggs and Stratton

Well, today Nutgone and I were digging out some more of our collection from our sister's garden. Neither of us have much room at the moment so we decided to take a couple of the smaller ones for now. He took an old world war two American army generator which I'll let him tell you about and I bought back an old Briggs.

It's a strange one as it has two flywheels and two cowlings. I've been researching it on the net just now and believe it to be from 1931, made between May and June. It is a model RC engine number 3888.
I never knew it was that old!

Anyway, it's been under a tarp for years and seems to be seized. Luckily the rust doesn't seem too bad. It never did have a petrol tank but I have an old round JAP tank that I will make fit.

Don't expect miracles, I'm not like my brother, I have a job, demanding wife and 3 little ones to keep happy.

I'll show some pictures now, I'll include one or two of the Douglas as well, the next project when space allows

Certainly different! Not seen one like that before, not even on SMOKSTAK FORUM in the States and I am sure that they would be interested in it. I will have to add one of those to my Briggs and Stratten 'shopping list', though I feel that it will be like finding a hens tooth in a pile of rockinghorse dung!

Pete.

I'm confussed is the first engine a Briggs or a Douglas? It sure looks as if you boys have your work cut out with the genny or does it not look to bad once it's cleaned up?

Good luck,
Stu

well they have been laying about for some time...
good luck with the restoration ian

mike....

Stu, the first engine is the Briggs. Large single cylinder.

The Douglas is a flat twin.

I'm just about to go down and cover it in easing oil, see if I can find some sockets to fit and get the head off.


I would welcome other people's suggestions on where to start. I was going to try getting the cowling and head off first and see how badly stuck the piston looks.

Found a You Tube video of one, lovely little thing!

Pete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvNIjUZTTpI

I found another one....

Excellent work, nice to see some running examples

I did some work on her last night, managed to get the cowling off and the cylinder head. This in turn freed up the engine for me. It wasn't a stuck piston that was causing the problem, it was rust and general rubbish caught around the flywheels!

I'll put some pictures up of what I've done so far. One thing I have noticed is that the piston seems a bit sloppy in the bore, not sure if it is supposed to be like that or even whether it will matter, there is also a nasty knocking around bottom dead centre but this could be something to do with the cams. Lets face it, it's an old engine so it's not going to be perfect.

The carb. Now taken off and trying to free up the throttle butterfly which is stuck solid!


Cowling off (drive end)


Cowling off (starter end)


Inside the cylinder, which is in surprisingly good condition.


The starter dog, which needs removing.


Next steps I reckon are to remove the flywheel and check the magneto out. I'm still not sure whether to break her down to nuts and bolts yet or not, maybe I'll let the condition of the engine tell me what to do

Don't expect any more updates for a few days as I expect to be out rabbit shooting for the next few nights then I've got a rally to go to this weekend.

As I remember it, I was the one who got this going last time. The starter dog is threaded on, it needs spinning off with a small bar through the holes. The flywheel is on a keyed taper shaft, last time it came free with a good tap on the sides, this time might need a puller, but I doubt it.

Let uncle Matt come over & show you how it's done!

Interesting progress made so far it might not be as bad as it looks to restore (fingers crossed lol)

Cracking video you found Pete, it shows great engineering in some places but in other parts it shows just how old and the limits they had when make there back in the 30's.

Stu.

i found this today for you on the net
just to add another twin cowl model to your list


kev

nutgone wrote:The flywheel is on a keyed taper shaft, last time it came free with a good tap on the sides, this time might need a puller, but I doubt it.

As I'm sure you are more than aware, hitting a flywheel can demagnetise it... That said, I'm a bugger for hammering mower flywheels when I can't be bothered to get out the drill and taps to use a puller. Of course, it might be the other one that has the magnets in, in which case all you have to worry about is taking a chunk off it - but how likely is that to happen?

(Don't take that the wrong way - hopefully you know I'm not 'starting')

In a desperate attempt to move this project on I offered to take the carb home, to the workshop, & get it sorted.

It's an old pot-metal carb (can't remember the proper English name for it now) & the throttle butterfly was seized solid, so I did a little work on it & tarted it up.

I failed to take any proper "Before" pics, but I did take a few of the throttle assembly, so I remembered how it went together....





So I managed to free it all off, aided by the fact he'd been spraying it with GT85, then I cleaned it all up & put it back together. Ian popped round & said "I was expecting it to look a bit better, I thought it might polish up?"

So, I've had another go. I've painted the old pot-metal silver, as there was no way it was going to "polish up", then I set to the brass bits. I tried wire brushing, I tried wire wool, I even tried sanding & a multitude of different attachments on the Dremmel, but nothing was working, so I tried battery acid

No, honestly I used battery acid. I must've left them, in a glass jam jar, for about 2 hours. Then I gloved-up removed them, rinsed them & realised they'd all gone a kind of copper colour. A good going over with a small brass wire brush (I found some of those tiny wire brush sets at an autojumble) & they all came back to nice shiny brass again.

I left all these bits soaking in water over night, then rinsed them off again this morning, had another quick go with the brass wire brush & finally sprayed them with brake & clutch cleaner (which I'm now convinced is just panel-wipe) & dried with clean rag.

I reckon it looks pretty good....






Now I've just got to transport the rest of the engine over here, in little "bite-sized" pieces, & hopefully we'll have a running, restored engine by christmas.

I know I said I don't like painting carbs, which I don't, but I feel I had no alternative with this one.

It's Rustoleum paint, which is pretty hardy stuff, when allowed to cure fully (which it will be), & some Brit carbs were painted, back in the day. Many people strip off the bodies of old Amal carbs to reveal the brass underneath, I can't think of anything worse myself, which is what I'm doing with Rustoleum silver, my dad got it for a Triumph he's restoring, where someone has stripped off all the paint from the old Amal carb, to reveal the brass underneath. Looks completely wrong, especially on a motorbike.

We'll see how long it lasts I guess. But I suppose even if it does begin to melt under the petrol (which it shouldn't if allowed to cure for long enough) the metallic elements to the paint should still keep the carb body looking reasonably shiny. The metal looked so bad it almost appeared to be porous.

I sometimes like the look of brass carbs (or parts) - depends what it's bolted to... I stripped the coating off the brass bits on the amal for my JAP and in combination with the black painted parts I like the way it looks. I'd have to agree though that having one thing brass on a bike doesn't really look right at all.

A lot of the problems with petrol affected paint come from preparation and subsequent care in my experience. I've used hammerite on petrol tanks and not had any peeling/bubbling where I've seen others have the same paint come off in sheets. Give the paint some time or some heat (or both) and cure it properly and it should be fine.

I even used internal household paint to do my old land rover... That's had petrol on it with no sign of peeling or bubbling either. The only drawback is it's not a smooth and shiny finish so dirt and stuff tends to stick quite well - I usually have to wash it with a plastic scouring pad

You've done a good job tidying up the carb and it looks ok painted silver with the brass fittings. So what will be next to get the same treatment?

Stu.

I'd like to get the engine apart next, just to make sure everything is OK. I doubt I'll be splitting the big ends or anything but I would like to check for sludge in the bottom and make sure the governor bits are all present and correct. Give it a wipe out, put it all back together, possibly grind the valves in if they need it and then see to the paintwork.
Not sure whether to check for a spark before all this or just hope for the best

Obviously if there is any excessive play in any bearings then the plan will have to change a bit but it is an old engine so I don't think things need to be too 'tight' in there.

Exactly, & it's never likely to be put back to work like it was, so I doubt there'll be any need to go too mad with it.

Looks like my hands will be full with the new JAP I've purchased. Well, I say purchased, I've won it, & I will have it, I just need to move a few things around first.

Maybe if you can get the mag off the Briggs you can send it over to me, I can clean it all up, check the coil & sort out the points???

Sounds like you two have a good set up one overhauling the big parts while the other does the small parts. It's an old engine well worth doing a good job on it, any idea on what colour you'll be painting it or you sticking to the same colour it is now?

Stu.

I think he's researched it & is going for black. Apparently they all left the factory black. He's thinking of doing the flywheels in red though, as you can only just see the centres of them through the cowling.

But I don't think he's realised that one side is a flywheel magneto, which I think shouldn't be painted, or should be painted silver to replicate it's original shiny metal finish.
(I think they were made of something called "Aloominem" whereas I always thought they were made of Aluminium)

Oh so it wasn't just the newer engines that were painted black. I think the flywheel would look good red just to break it up a bit. So is the green it's in now the colour to show it was army issue?

Stu.

No, that was the left-over's from a pot of "Landrover Green" paint we had years ago, we bought it to paint the Douglas.

Inside the cowling is a lighter green, similar to the new colour I've painted the Tarpen, but we still have no idea if it was originally painted this colour. (also I think it looks a bit naff to have all your engines painted exactly the same colour).

I'd love to know what it was used for & when it was imported. There were so many different British engine manufacturers back then, & so many different & similar engines to choose from, I'd love to know why someone decided to import a Briggs, all the way from America & what they wanted it for?

I thought it was an old cement mixer engine, which I suppose it still could be. I suppose the small flat belt pulley should tell us something.

Yes black!

Black shiny blower housings and engine block, dull black barrel and exhaust. Shiny ally head (which will probably have to be painted silver but we'll see how shiny we can get it first). I am now torn between having both flywheels/blowers painted silver or maybe the magneto one painted silver and the other one painted red, or maybe both silver and the starter dog and pulley in red. I'll have a better idea when I've stripped it all down and cleaned it all up. Who knows, maybe we'll find some original paint under there.

My garage is slowly taking shape. When we got back from the rally today the electric had run out (bloody key meters ), the freezers were defrosting and the wife was doing her nut so I decided to have a proper sort out in there and keep out of her way!. I now have the tarpen and the kids bikes in there, with pretty much all my other stuff and still a bit of room to walk around and work in. Next step is to install some decent lights, fix up some shelves and hanging spaces, get a bench in there and have another shift around/tip run and I should have a functioning workshop (Got to sell some rifles first though to raise some funds )

Got the magneto off, plug out of the head and barrel off tonight. There seems to be quite a bit of side to side play in the big end, a fair bit of end float in the crank and some scoring in the piston. Not sure how worried I should be about this

Internals seem to be in good condition though, just a lot of cleaning to do.

Looks like I need a set of American spanners now, I've got metric and British imperial so what am I looking for, AF sizes or is that too modern? Sorry but I don't have much idea when it comes to American engines

There is also a strange oil feed that seems to pump oil under the piston, how it does this I don't know as I'm pretty sure there is no oil pump. Very well made engine though, some lovely engineering in there and most of the nuts and bolts seem to come undone pretty easily. The hardest part was getting the mag off, had to take the whole engine side plate off with it but that will be Nutgone's problem to sort out He's sorted a petrol tank already.


Pictures to follow on in a day or two.

Ian

Shame you've found some wear on the crank and scoring on the piston, with something that old it's not going to be easy to get parts or do you think it will be ok to run as it is?
As for the spanners I think it's just AF you need, you have the other spanners covered, as I've never heard of any other spanners apart from the 3 sets.
I'd like to see a pic when you get the time of the oil feed your talking about, sometimes all there is was a hole drilled in the crank and when the crank turns through the oil in would force oil into the hole and thus feeding up to the piston.

Stu.