I'm glad you approve of my rather original looking fuel tank. I quite like the look of something that has a certain patina to it, and for this tank at least all i shall be doing with it is a light tidy up of any missing black paint and a touch up here and there of any gold with a final coat of clear lacquer. The retaining straps in time will either get replaced for stainless or good second hand ones as and when they become available. As far as i can make out to date the flywheel covers for these earlier ignitions didn't have any scripting on them, just plain. The pics of my AD that were taken at the time i first acquired the motor show it with a later type ignition and has since been swapped with something more in keeping of its age.(it actually came with the original magneto and cover when i bought it which was a bonus for me) A bit later on in production in the mid 50's you begin to see scripted covers with "the best outboard motor in the world" which later got changed to "for the world", so yours having virtually no scripting left on it is probably not such a bad thing after all
Along with changes to scripting on covers, the ignitions themselves also changed slightly throughout the years. (Jeremy's listing should show some of these changes nicely)
As for nuts and bolts there's not much wrong with using stainless these days, but for me originality with my own motors is quite important, even if they are a tad rusty they can still be cleaned up pretty good. (it's all about patina with a lot of mine)
I've come across the problem of swapping drive tubes from one donor engine onto a working "resto" job as well. As mentioned previously, some of the castings on the pump housings will take a degree of stretching to get a "foreign" tube to fit, but go carefully as once they've reached that stage where they're almost at the point of fracture it can go horribly wrong very quickly. Gently does it!
Coils i think by now are fairly fragile things. If it still works then great, if not a new coil is the way to go along with some of the grief of removing stubborn nuts and bolts and studs to get the job done. Plenty of videos about to help.
The big tiller washer you mention, again as far as i've been able to work out to date seems to be chromed/nickel plated. Brass washers i think belong on the wartime 102's.
What spark plug you decide to use is up to you. I like the older take apart ones like the Lodge or 8com versions, but a modern plug will probably give you greater reliability all round and they're easier to find on the internet or via John at SOS.
With a lot of things seagull related, if you're willing to sit and wait patiently you'll eventually come across all the right bits for this restoration, including a tiller with the correct grip still attached to it. Rubber grips are ok if you have a preference for them, but for authenticities sake not for this age of 102. Rubber grips i reckon came in during the 60's, but as you've found out being a seagull a lot of bits fit straight on regardless of age or correctness.
If i might be so bold in correcting you slightly Martin, seagulls from this era were not labelled as Marston's as the company name had changed by this time to British Seagull, so for correctness anything made post war they're now called seagulls not Marston's.
Now, when you come to take things apart with your powerhead you'll hopefully find that all it will need is a good clean up and careful examination of the internals. I don't expect you'll have too much bother in there apart from maybe the water jacket being a little bit furred up like most of them by now. A word of caution though, resist the temptation of undoing the brass core plug. DON'T DO IT! You could easily fracture the surrounding cast iron of the engine block, trust me i've done it before and wished i'd left things alone!!!
Better to mask off the core plug with tape if you're thinking of repainting the block.
As far as compression goes, anything above 50psi is a goer, anything less could be problematic. A 10:1 fuel mix should keep things where they need to be.
It's not only the golden oldie 102's i like the best cos i like them all. Even the more modern looking ones, if it's a 102 i'm bound to have a fondness for it.
All good, and if there's anything else i can help you with just yell. I'm never very far away
Jon
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Post edited by Moderator CharlesP to remove personal reference
The brass vent in the middle of the cap has either a narrow slot or a slightly wider slot. From a distance you'd barely notice, but to some of the purists it's quite a big deal. For a better description of this take a look at Jeremy's listing of "little model 40's" on the main SOS pages. Pics will help explain things a lot better than me.
