The petrol to oil recommendations are interesting:
'If we were you we would use about 1 1/4 pints of lubricating oil to each gallon of petrol, shaken up very thoroughly before being poured into the tank, and stick to it.'
Oil, they say, 'is like red meat to the average Briton... very badly needed. (At this time Britain was undergoing meat shortages - as well as shortages of lots of other things)
They go on to say that the proportion can be reduced after ten hours (at least) to one pint in one gallon (1 - 8 ) but recommend that the original proportions are used - that's about 1 in 6 1/2.
Here's a tank from the era. It makes it fairly plain, I think, that one in eight is the minimum.
It's obvious that British Seagull had a bit of a problem working out the optimum mix at this time, tanks only a couple of years away have 1 to ten printed on them.
Interestingly in those days when 'a suitable brand of medium weight oil' was suggested, the booklet states that the design of the exhaust system will not cause smoke to any unpleasant extent' - this is on 6 1/2 to one!
We have had lots of interesting discussions about gearbox oil for early Seagulls on this forum and its predecessors. Given the fairly precise instructions on petrol/oil mixture, it's fascinating that the recommendation for gearbox oil is:
'Any heavy back axle oil will do...'
For me the Seagull booklets are as much fun as the motors themselves, and this one is an example I hadn't seen before. The manuals you get with an outboard these days are quite thick, most of it in dozens of foreign languages, and much of the rest given over to health and safety advice. British Seagull pulled no punches, and offered advice to users who they quite rightly thought should be deprived of any excuse for blaming the factory.
Here's the advice about slackening the steering friction, where they explain how to slightly undo the slotted screw that controls the bracket:
'Under no circumstances confuse this screw with the hexagon-headed bolt fitted to the clip beneath the mounting bracket, which retains the transmission system and locks it to the power head, and which IN NO CIRCUMSTANCES must be touched or slackened, otherwise the whole of the transmission , gearbox and lower unit will fall off'
I wonder how many FV owners simply left the steering tension as it was rather than risk this unintended disassembly!
The booklet is scanned, and I've been attempting to mail the pages to John. He'll put the whole thing on his site so you can download it, print it, and have a chuckle...