Internal Fire Museum of Power

As at least one member of this forum knows, for better or worse, I ended up buying the incomplete Premier engine which had appeared on ebay a couple of times over the past month or so.

When I bought it I assumed it was a late model as Charles Hudson's SEM article on Hartop told me that Premier only took over engine production when Hartop closed in 1948. However it appears that R Percy Robinson Motor & Engineering Co Ltd of St Thomas Street Scarborough had been selling equipment (probably fishing tackle winches and other auxiliaries) fitted with the "Premier" engine well before that, presumably buying them in from Hartop either complete or as casting sets. Toward the end of the 1930's marinised versions of the engine were being offered by the Premier Engineering Co at the same address and the Robinson etc Co was dissolved in 1942.




Now most of this is supposition, the afore mentioned forum member sent me an ad from a 1939 edition of 'The Motor Boat and Yachting' magazine which confirms company name and address at that time and the 'London Gazette' provided the notice of dissolution for the Robinson Co. What I could do with is some earlier copies of journals in which Premier or Robinson might have advertised to see what they were doing when. Anybody got access to such things or any other information regarding the relationship between these two companies?

TIA

NHH

A few more pics:-







NHH

Nick,

I dont know if its me but your pictures are not showing.

Martin P

It's not just you, Mr P... they don't work for me either.

That's odd, I've hot linked from Fozzers - show up ok for me! Does this forum support attachments or will I have to upload to webshots?

NHH

Nick,

As if by magic they appeared, thanks Paul, usually you have to upload from your web site picture store like webshots.

Martin P

Hooray! So what do you think?

Paul; is hot linking to attachments on 'another forum' a legitimate way of posting pics?

NHH

Spent some time over the weekend going through SEM back issues - at least up to the point there the last collected index was published. There is not a great deal of info on the vertical Hartops and even less on the 'Premier connection' (Charles Hudson's 1976 article refers to Premier only as "a firm of of fishing tackle manufacturers from Yorkshire").

I envisage the relationship between the two companies growing in a similar way to that between Norman and Auto Diesels; Auto-Diesels of Uxbridge were for many years one of Norman of Warwick's best customers, incorporating their engines in to various generator sets. So when Norman closed in the late 1950's Auto Diesels aquired the rights to the engines (and in this instance the name) and moved production to Uxbridge to service the needs of both themselves and other Norman customers. Anyone know better?

BTW are the pics ok now?

NHH

I can see the pictures fine.

Chris

I still can't se them ... I suspect it's because I'm not registered at Stationary engine Forum - I have tried but that site seems to have banned my email address. I've emailed their admins to try and resolve this, so far without a reply. Have others had trouble with SEF and/or its admins?

Well, I've finally spotted the attach files box. Limited to three but her they are!

I knew Peter Forbes from the uk.rec.engines.stationary newsgroup, but resisted joining the forum until it became clear that usenet was dying the death. No trouble registering, or with anything else for that matter.

NHH

As mentioned elsewhere, Hartop expert Mark Tewkesbury paid me a visit a couple of weeks ago and brought a little Amal carb which had been adapted by him to suit the H, but the inlet stub on mine had been modified at some time in the past to take a slightely larger instrument. I have a Villiers carb which fits so will at least have a go with that before de-modifying the stub. Mark also told me that my engine had once been in Charles Hudson's collection - not a bad provenance!

Last weekend I built up a mag from the Wico 'graveyard' using up my last clockwise driven flange (the bit with the trip arm pivot pins) in the process and today I made a coupling to suit the non-original drive dog. Unfortunately what I thought was a lump of tufnol turned out to be more like paxolin but hopefully it will be strong enough.

Looks like someones been busy, whilst Ive been out swanning around at a show

All looks good Nick, I shall listen out for the tune from it!

Mark

If you can hear it in Sussex, those main bearings will definitely need doing! Though, as I said, the timing side one does seems to have been replaced at some time within the last 40years or so as it is an RHP.

What is the normal hole compliment on the mag platform, the Wico picked up on a pair located in the 'trough'?

Still to sort fuel feed and missing one vital ingredient - a starting handle, but had a few pops out of it just pulling flywheel over with a puff of gypsy's breath.

NHH