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Lock-Up garages and Big Cats

Just got back home after an interesting days work recovering the contents of a lock-up garage in deepest Oxfordshire.

Thanks very much to our faithful aide Martin Perman who came along to assist myself and Rita to move what was potentially a lot of heavy old iron.

Most of it was once set up in an oil research laboratory, and consisted of a pair of very large Caterpillar 1Y73 oil test engines, a couple of Petter W1's, a Petter AV1 and a very unusual Petter AVB, the likes of which I have not seen previously, and which develops 20bhp when supercharged.....

The Cat engines are pure research tools, single cylinder and about 20bhp. Bore

5.125" and stroke 6.5", about 2.2 litres! The flywheels were off which was a mercy as they went about 4cwt each and were loaded into the back of the van separately, toegther with a set of machined and fitted bolts.

The engines were apparently completely overhauled and then inhibited and put into store.

The Petters stuff is more common, apart from the AVB which is a real freak, but interesting nonetheless.

Of more immediate interest is a batch of new spares, including 4 brand new Lucas magnetos which we will put on ebay in the next week or so. There is a lot of new Petters liners, rings, gaskets and stuff for the diesels, and a huge amount of coupling and fittings for the two Heenan & Froude DPX0 dynamometers which were also in there.

The deal is that we will sell what we can on behalf of the owner, and then what is left Martin & myself will split between us. Martin has already put his name on a DPX0 dyno and one of the W1 engines, and I will probably keep the Cat engines as they are not exactly commercial.

Once we have all the stuff back here we will issue a list to anyone interested prior to it going on ebay, with a guide price. ALL proceeds will go to the owner of the stuff, we are not taking any commission other than what is left over, plus the bits we have already put our names on.

I have a few pictures of the loading up which I will put on the website later.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

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Peter A Forbes
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Pictures of the collection at:

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Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

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Peter A Forbes

Gentlemen,

I enjoyed the day especially listening to the gentleman whose lockup we cleared, he knew every detail of the engines and what tests were performed and for what reasons. Watching Peter use a chain winch made me feel decidedly unfit especially when I offered to load the second engine :-)) The Petter W1 that Peter eluded to has some interesting attachements this included a heat exchanger that water was passed though to cool the engine coolant which I'm afraid has slipped my mind but was not water.

Mart> Just got back home after an interesting days work recovering the

Reply to
Campingstoveman

Ethylene Glycol I think Peter said, probably neat antifreeze, they could afford to put up with the losses through evaporation.

I am going to ask Peter to write up some of his experiences and put them on the website, as so much of this kind of information is lost once these people leave the industry.

He certainly had some interesting activity to recount, like the time the AVB engine blew its cylinder block and head off the crankcase!

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

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Peter A Forbes

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