Noticed this on ebay, it's at the end of its time with no bids the last time I looked:
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Two things caught my eye, one was that the starting price looked pretty high, even in view of the restoration that the engine had had, the other was the fact that the engine has a reserve price that is even higher than the starting price!
I don't want to open a book on engine prices in general, but would this engine sell if the starting price was either lower, or the reserve was removed?
Psychology is a wonderful thing, and a prospective buyer would surely be put off by the very high start AND reserve?
Peter
-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:
a very appealing and fairly unusual engine. If I had that sort of cash to throw at an engine, I certainly wouldn't promise it to someone I'd never heard of, with no feedback score for an unseen engine. It seems like other punters thought the same.
I agree with your point on the starting price, though I couldn't claim to be able to value it. Its not worth £9.5K to me, that's for sure.
Ouch! Having set a reserve, as I understand it he'll have to pay through the nose now, even though it didn't sell.
It doesn't appeal to me at all and just moving 15cwt about in order to exhibit it must have been a daunting task in itself.
I wonder what it would have fetched if advertised sensibly? I'd have thought £2,500 was nearer the mark myself - but what do I know. £9,500? You could buy a whole lot of interesting old aero engine for that, including a Merlin.
I had a similar 3-cylinder engine which I sold about 15 years ago, can't remember how much for but around the 2K mark.This was after full crank grind, +.030 Gardner pistons, fuel equipment all done, valves & guides etc. I'm sure I could have got double that since then, but 10K for a 4-cylinder sounds way over the top to me. Mine did have the original Gardner 'type 2' (not 2UC) gearbox which is very rare now. I would want to look very closely at how that Parsons box is attached, as they have an aluminium casing which is designed for bolting to a cylindrical flywheel housing. They are a good box, but spares are probably harder to find than for the engine!
No sign of any raised hand start provision, it would originally have been on the gearbox. One of the great things about these engines is that hand starting is so easy!
The bit about 'first diesel marine engine from Gardners after the steam engine' is utter bo**ocks. They made plenty of semi-diesels and I think full diesels also.
I think the only market they would have any hope of getting that sort of money is the Narrow boat enthusiats, but I get the feeling that that market has passed its peak (I'm not really in touch with it these days, though). The 4-cylinder is really too big for a narrow boat, though there is one former working tug with a 5-cylinder. The
3-cylinder came back to me after 10 years or so for some attention with badly glazed bores, as it hadn't been working hard enough.
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