I dashed up to Northamptonshire yesterday to collect my recent E-bay purchases. It was just about a 100 miles each way (M4/A34/M40/A43 Bewdley) and including three quarters of an hour chatting time, was completed in four and a half hours which I thought was pretty good ;o))
I was also home in plenty of time to sneak the treasures into the garage before Hazel got home from work, so it was an aggravation free day!
I expected to collect a French Guinard (what's that mean?) all aluminium air cooled lever start engine (2276089987), a Edgar Westbury 80 watt set and a very interesting small compressor (2277201905) which Mike Hodge kindly identified for me as a Hymatic set. The advert line drawing he found for me showed a man carrying it one handed, but I expected that to be artistic license. Nope, it really is light in weight and the tubular frame is also the air receiver, an altogether novel and interesting set of solutions in one place. I look forward to getting into it.
I've been fiddling about with Alco Featherweight engines for years now (one of my 1970's purchases was an Alco, the unit I passed on to Nigel Cook only last week) but have never been in the right place at the right time with the right engine at the right price to buy an original charging set. So you can imagine my feelings when one was offered to me yesterday for a £100 less than the one I looked at seriously at the Sodbury Sort out. He demonstrated it for me, connecting a lights board to it and it started really easily. I didn't exactly bite his hand off, but a deal was swiftly done and that too was dragged blinking into the light and loaded into the back of the Volvo.
I've got three EW 80 watts' now, two more than I actually wanted to end up with. What I'm looking for is a dual voltage one and I was hoping this one might be - but no. Two of them will be for sale in due course.
A useful day - especially as I got the frame built for the MS in the evening!
Regards,
J. Kim Siddorn,