Saving Old Seagulls

Rings and gaskets arrived this morning :D , which brightened my day until I took a really good look at the top of the barrel. barrel1.jpg :( I honed the cylinder wall with a flap wheel revealing pitting in the cylinder wall :( I torqued the head bolts down to 18 ft lb, or 24 lb on the luggage scales...

Actually you will find that the coil secondary reading is K ohms, people often state just ohms, the scale range on the VOM is often disregarded. Consider that the ratio of primary ohms to secondary ohms determines the ratio of primary volts to secondary volts. As secondary volts need to be in the 1...

It's a grey flywheel- I've seen bronze ones, but it's not one of them. Re: the coil resistances, you do mean 4.78 kil ohms- don't you? It's a moot point, the HT winding is open circuit, but I checked with an oscilloscope, and I am getting volts out of the LT winding. For now, I'll use a spark from a...

I did the oil down the plughole check this evening- a little refinement. I checked with the plug upwards to let the oil seal the piston, and an old plug downwards to seal the head gasket. So what was it, head or rings. And the answer is.............................................both of them. This ...

Update... I've managed to get a spark using a temporary lash-up of a Lucas coil and battery, and timed it to about 22 degrees BTDC- about 35 mm on the flywheel circumference. I've stuck in a new NGK plug, squirted in a little bit of mixture, and given it a pull- nothing. I would have been content fo...

The first step needs to be identifying it- can you find the serial number stamped on the crankcase? After that, check the gearbox oil, set it up in a barrel of water and have a shot at starting it. Try to establish what's missing- fuel, compression or spark, and take it from there.

Seagull ignitions spark at about 23 degrees BTDC + or - 2 degrees, the points gap will affect this a little. At 33 degrees BTDC it will be getting harder to start but will run well at peak revs 4000+ but not tick over too well, at 13 degrees BTDC it will start very well tick over well at very low r...

I have a Villiers Mk2 Midget engine which has a M1634 coil. That appears to have a safety gap in the secondary winding. Certainly no continuity when tested with a meter. Safety gap? For the safety of who or what? I would ask: how are you checking the continuity? What sort of meter, what range? Re: ...

I've checked the resistance from the HT stud to the backplate- I'm not getting anything until I crank the meter up to the 20M range. AIUI, it should be around 5k Ohms, so I think it's a safe assumption that I've got an open circuit HT winding. Now, assuming the LT is intact, is it possible to connec...

Has it got to be gasket paper? Is there any reason why I can't use instant gasket?

just built up again and still no spark,getting a reading of 4.53 down the seagull ht lead on the 20 ohm scale and to further confuse things i put a car ht lead on it to see if the seagull one was a duff and that gave a reading of 19.53 on the same scale. any ideas, frank. Remember that car plug lea...

One must have- a decent arsenal for tackling seized slot head screws. My heart sinks when I see them. At the very least, a couple of decent flat blade drivers, and ideally an impact driver.

Thanks for all the replies- a quick update, it's SJP585H5 which comes up as a Forty Plus from August 1965. The canal doesn't sound very promising, and an extra detail, the local stretch has a particularly tempting topping of weeds, T-shirts, condoms and Tesco bags- how well do the stock propellers c...

... just a quick introduction- not much to announce really, I bought a Seagull (details TBA) from a bloke at a pop festival for a fiver, a barrel to test it in for a tenner, and I'm finally getting round to doing some work on it, and having a nice little link back to my grandfather and uncle's lobst...