Data on Early Forty Series

[Gannet]

I have been trying to collect data on the early Forty series.
The year started with one known F - that was the one that Charles P saw and photographed at Ibsley. Since then F201, F341 and F1207 have surfaced; although in F1207's case brought down from the loft! Jan has stripped F341 down and we now know the 40cc cylinder dimensions of the early 'small block' Fs. Knowledge of other features from these engines is now available.
With Charles P's advice and help, I thought I would try to log all known F,FV and FVPs so as to have an approximation as to how many survive, but more importantly to try to determine when the various changes and modification were introduced.
Charles was keen to extend it logically to include LMs and LSs; but I chickened out of this as the numbers were much larger and I don't have any experience of them.

The table below, which is just about legible (?), is a scan of the table that I have produced. I haven't managed to work out how to add this kind of data to this site in a better way (advice please!).

I would very much like further information, so that it can be added to the table and the information shared on any known F, FV and FVPs. There must be hundreds out there! Thank you.

Jeremy

[charlesp]

Excellent, Gannet. This is good stuff, and I sincerely hope there's more information out there that your chart will nudge into the public domain.

A post from Oyster earlier today prompts me to suggest an addition which I really should have flagged immediately. I am mentally chastising myself for not even thinking about tank decals and mixing instructions. perhaps it's because of vast amounts of fiddling wioth tanks and camera etc. when the decals were being mastered. I am not convinced that the mixing instructions were different between FV and FVP, I am however pretty sure that they changed from year to year in the light of experience.

Great stuff, Gannet. As you say the knowledge base surrounding these lovely little chaps has grown exponentially this year.

[Charles uk]

I'm forced to agree with the other Charles re the tank decals, though I can't find the notebook containing all my notes, but from memory, the few I saw were the same, canted or small round, this was before the clone water slide logos as this formed the data that Charles provided for the silk screen artwork so must have been original.

Wasn't the fuel mix 8 : 1 on both, Charles & Keith?

From memory I don't recall any of the logo traces being in a fixed location they seemed to move about a bit & didn't the cubic capacity of the FV & FVP work out to be 56 cc.

[Keith.P]

My restored FVP hasn't got the mixture decal on it, as I was convinced the replacement was nothing like the original.
My one did have the remnants of the original decal, but sadly I never took a picture. As far as I can remember it was a fuel mix of one pint to a gallon, like the small one on the 102 but bigger, but with no other information, like clutch or gaps.

[Gannet]

Charles,
I will include an extra column and will try to collect data on the details on the decal, including whether it stated 8:1. So, if anybody is going to provide info on their F/FV/FVP, please note.

Cubic capacity. After getting very confused and after talking to Charles UK (producing slightly less confusion!), my maths works out as follows:-

F Bore and stroke 38.00 x 36.00=40.83cc. Although if the stroke was an imperial dimension (which I think it probably will be) of say, 1 27/64" ie 1.4219" (36.116mm), then capacity is 40.96cc.

FV/FVP Bore and stroke 45.00 x 1.375"(34,925mm)=55.546cc (Yes, Charles, I will concede, 56cc is nearer (just!) to 55cc)

Jeremy

[Jan]

Here some pictures from a New Old Stock Little Forty tank.

The tank came from a former Britisch Seagull dealer stock in the Netherlands.

Jan