Saving Old Seagulls

mounting bracket

Looks authentic to me! add a bow tie prop and away you go. Box should have two nipples and a third on the water pump housing. Next an SD?

It came with a 4 blade fan prop

close up detail of the flywheel , notice the very square edge and older style fuel cap

SD's and "others" are like hens teeth over here Huggy . any way I have enough to smarten up and play with right now . But if the right one came along , you never know .
Still looking for better performance from my other AC's and home built props , plus I got a race century to rebuild to find more speed and new boat to design and construct .
Very secret Squirrel on the design but the guy I have helping me is an americas cup teams senior designer .And my idea is like nothing currently afloat .

Is the tank brass or iron? Cap is bayonet which were used on the SD's, looks like original straps as well. Early bracket too. Nice find!

I think the tank is brass , some black spray bomb to remove , there does appear to be some corrosion on the tank around the fuel tap . doesn't look so good which is odd i would have thought .

I thought it was a solder repair using an iron rather than a flame.

could be . will find out when I strip it back , just sold a motor down to seven at a loss I might add !

What a nice find. Those brackets are my favourites; they're very scarce and fetch more than you paid for the motor on their own. The rather strange attachment to the drive shaft tube is interesting - I've never been able to work out what the designers were thinking!

The whole motor looks good and original, apart from the prop which may well have been sold as an 'improvement' later in its life. British Seagull sold those square bladed ones as offering a 10% performance gain, probably on the back of how 'modern' they looked - reminiscent of turbo props on the airliners of the day.

The Jubilee clips and bayonet tank are entirely correct, and so is the solid fuel pipe. The flywheel with the flatter sides and plain cover is right, so is the early base plate with no circumferential flange. I wouldn't be surprised if you fing the scarce 'captive bolt' type of points in there.

The grease nipples aren't grease nipples - they are oil nipples, they would originally have been a tapered rather than bulbed fitting, many gearboxes have expired as a result of people just filling them with grease, which rapidly wipes off the gears as they mesh leaving an unprotected steel surface to the mercy of water. Grease doesn't run back to cover exposed bits, nor does it emulsify with water. Best to have the front cap off for a look-see.

I await the verdict on the tank with interest, this is a nice motor only looking for a swept back SD style prop.

Jealous. I haven't got an AC anything like as good.

Could be an amalgam of an AC and an SD?

Don't think so, it all looks OK to me. Apart from the power head and tank they're pretty similar.

Yes, a decent original engine, early post war, with all the right parts. Excellent!.

Hang on to the bracket, very hard to find, and not very robust. You can understand why those brackets were not used for long.The brass thrumbscrews are available from John by the way.

at a loss I might add

Chilli, there is no such thing as a loss when it comes to guns and old engines. If you sold it for a few bucks less then you paid for it then you merely paid a small fee to play with it for a while. All is fair. Think of it as 'rent' or a "cover charge'. If the "small fee to play" theory does not make you feel better then just look around at the smucks eating 10,ooo s of $ depreciation on new autos and boats and your case of beer "loss" on a seagull will come into focus LOL.

roger that , some things I already know .Gun could come in handy from time to time , leaves me thinking .