For Sale: Marston Wartime 102 outboard motor for restoration or spare parts

[Rromanos]

I recently came into the possession of a British Seagull with the serial number SD571P3. Built in large numbers during WWII for the invasion of Europe for use on rivers and canals, many of them were re-purposed for civilian use. How this one made its way to Leipzig, Germany, far away from the invasion and in the former Soviet sector is a mystery to me. It is in OK condition, but with the mount missing and the prop somewhat chewed up, there is rust on the stem and other parts as well. (See photos). It has the original copper flywheel, levers, with bronze tubing and caps. After talking with John I found out that the flywheel does not spin so I can assume that the piston has seized up. This would be the perfect restoration project, or for spare parts. For any interest, please send me an email at: raymond.romanos70@gmail.com
The price is negotiable and I can ship if you pay the shipping fees.

Thanks!
Ray

ID Numbers:
SD571P3
B3572
JM 9391
CIESS 1186
Propeller Boss: 1037

Specifications:
'SD' Coded Engines
Years Manufactured: 1942 to 1946
Model Name:Wartime 102
Gearbox: Clutch 2.5:1
Prop: 10 x 8 1/2 (Two-blade, raked)
Cylinder Style: Short Water Jacket
HP: 4
Gear Oil: SAE or EP 140
Engine Size 102cc

[Hugz]

Yes, one of our favourite Seagulls. A lovely example you have. An early model, probably 1942.

I would like to add this one to the Global Seagull Register. You have done a fine job in photographing and describing the motor. May I ask a couple of more questions please:

1. Does it have a stamp on the skeg ie a markings of C.I.E.S.S on the bottom gearbox skeg?
2. Is there any chance you can undo the brass nut on the magneto flywheel and lift off the round "coolie" cover to expose a "JM number". JM stands for John Marston by the way
3. Is the tank iron with a bayonet cap and a seagull motif on the front. I'm expecting it to be plain.
4. Some of the early ones had a second crankcase number on the opposite side to the engine number typically starting with a B and 4 digits. Is there one?

Many thanks. A very desirable motor and far too good for parts. Good luck with the sale, though I'm not anticipating it will take long.

Cheers, Hugo.

[Rromanos]

Hi Hugo,
Thank you for your reply! First here are some of the photos you requested. I will photograph more of the magneto and the gas tank. What do you think I should ask for? I had one offer for 60 Euros.
Cheers,
Raymond

[NaughtyBits]

Very nice. There wouldn't happen to be a stamped number on the propeller boss, would there?

Thanks.

[Rromanos]

Hi Hugo,
Here are the rest of the photos you requested.
Cheers,
Ray

[tambikeboy]

60 euro"s wouldn't buy the tank cap

[Oyster 49]

I was in Leipzig a few weeks ago when I was working in Erfurt. Shame it was not for sale then! I would suggest that based on UK prices, 60 Euro is cheap. However it's in a hard to get to location for a UK buyer.

Looks like a late JM number on an early SD engine too. So potentially not the original magneto, swapped out at some point perhaps. Nice find though!

[Charles uk]

And it will need a lot of work on that lower unit, it's seized gentlemen, don't inflate the price beyond the economic cost of repair.

[headdownarseup]

Back up a bit here!

JM numbers more specifically

I also have an SD. It's also a little bit older than this one and its serial number being 288. Identical oil nipple configuration too which had me wondering if my gearbox was from a very late Marston. Looking at this one though is starting to put my mind at ease a bit. No stamp on my skeg though! I've been wondering about how many motors were produced for inspection to the Ministry Of Supply. I've always suspected small batches for scrutineering before they got stamped. This one has a stamp, mine doesn't. Seems to fit so far wouldn't you say.

My JM number is 9196. A very quick bit of maths on a calculator will show you that ALL of the numbers are in sequence.There are 283 numbers separating mine from this one going by serial number alone. Same with the B number, 283 apart. Same when you subtract 571 from 288.

BANG TIDY!!!

Similarly mine has on the opposite side to the serial number B.3289. which again subtracted from 3572 we end up with 283 numbers apart. In sequence in EVERY WAY. That to me is very definitely a matching numbers motor. If we could get a better close up pic of the gearbox numbers on the end cap we might be able to see what's what when it comes to all these odd numbers everywhere especially with 2 motors this close to one another.

So it seems that Oyster's earlier comment about this engine's ignition being "swapped" might not necessarily be true at all.
All we need now is a lot more info from motors in the 5-6 &7000 numbers to see if there really is any truth to my waffling.

Is there a pattern forming here i wonder?

Hugo i'm sure will work out in time that provided enough information comes through in the data, things will start to become clearer.
This was/is something i struggled with when trying to obtain any data worth having. I just hope that Hugz has better luck with it than i did.



Nice motor by the way Raymond. Shame it's seized up and that it's got some gangrene in its leg otherwise i'd be tempted


Jon

[Charles uk]

What did your researches tell you about the frequency of the CIESS stamps Jon?

[headdownarseup]

Not a lot Chas.

The few i managed to get were too widely distributed across the range i can't really make any sense from it.

The better way to tell would be to concentrate on a group of numbers within a 1000 grouping anywhere within the 10,000+range. Start at the lower serial number within this 1000 grouping and work up to the highest number within the grouping and see how many have a stamp.

The chances of actually obtaining the data on a tightly grouped set of outboards within a 1000 group are slim to none. I don't think we have that many members that regularly contribute to the forum on a regular basis that have an SD that are willing to share the information. I've tried and got nowhere i'm afraid, now it's Hugo's turn.
By grouping i mean e.g serial number 714 to serial number 1714 or any combination within the 10,000. But it must be a concentration of 1000 motors worth of data within as tight as possible the 1000 limit. Do you get me? That way you'll figure out the frequency of the stamps.
Nigh on impossible to find this out without help from the owner/s of said SD's in the first place.


I have a gut instinct with this though. Might be something, might be nothing.
Either way i still think they might have been inspected in small batches. Maybe 20 at random every 1000 or so , maybe 50 at random every 1000, but i'm not so sure that EVERY one of the 10,000 was stamped. It would take too long. I suspect that if there was a scrutineering process involved this would be kept as simple as possible. Show that the motor operates, starts-stops-goes in/out of gear. Does the motor do what the war office has asked it to do? Keep it simple and quick. Once approved by whoever, STAMP and seal the lid on the box and move to the next one. 20 at a time seems a manageable number to me, maybe even 50 at any one time, but to stamp all 10,000+ seems a bit far fetched to me.

All i will say is not all SD's have a stamp on the skeg.

Jon

[Hugz]

It is hard to put a price on it Raymond. Location creates a lot of differential. Also the not knowing if the magneto coil is good is worrying. Easy solved though if you can put a multimeter across where the plug lead goes into the bottom of mag coil and the other lead to earth (any bit of metal on the motor) and see if you have a small resistance Ω. No reading at all will indicate a crook coil. Use the lowest ohm scale.

Personally I hope you get the bug and wish to restore it and have the delight of first starting it..... a wonderful feeling for us enthusiasts. We have all the advice here that you will need

Good question re prop NB.


Jon, some figures for you to ponder:

SD125 JM7208 B3126
SD288 JM9196 B3289
SD571 JM9391 B3572
SD788 JM8122 B3789
One has a crown stamp and this one has the C.I.E.S.S. stamp.

Can you add in your other SD registry numbers under 1000 and their JM and B numbers please so we can have a look at them. I haven't received your data yet.

Cheers, Hugo.

[Charles uk]

Jon your making things way too complicated again.

If you have the details from 30 SDs & 6 have CIESS stamps, you could say your data was indicating about 20%, using your way the chances are that you would only have found 3ish out of the same thousand & at 20%, only 1 of those would have a stamp, that would give a answer of 33% almost 50% more!
Which way would be the most accurate?

As it has taken you 3 years to add 10 more to the data base, I won't live long enough to see any results, it will be a miracle
if Hugz does any better as he's so far from the centre of things.

When CharlesP & I started researching, we were only trying to get an overview of what the SD series comprised of, not produce a data base, so that we could answer new members questions with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

[Oyster 49]

I'm with Charles, personally I think the best thing we can do is to find and register as many SDs as we can, with good quality photos. We can then see how many engines are out there, and a photo record of them. I've been discussing this with Hugz.

We can track every nut, bolt, stamp and widget, but what will we do with that information?

Also we need to keep the wild theories suppressed! Just facts

[headdownarseup]

Charles
You asked me how many were stamped. The truth is i don't know. I don't think we will ever know how many were stamped.I shouldn't think Hugo will do much better at this either. I hope he does for our sake even if you're not around any more. The biggest problem i've faced with all of this is inconsistency. A lot of the time data acquisition is hit and miss. Trying to keep things as simple as i could make it was too difficult at times it seems. When i first started this i originally had over 35 separate pieces of information for each and every motor i was lucky enough to be sent the data from. This as it turned out was far too complex and takes up too much room on a posting here on the forum to be able to read it, too long winded and took too long to acquire.This was me trying to be as accurate as i could for you guys. Nope, too difficult and long winded again! As a result what i was asking for had to be reduced to the bare bones despite you guys asking for answers to obscure things that in the grand scheme of things most people aren't really interested in anyway. Sorry but that's the truth of it. Simple is one thing, being accurate quite another.
Trying to get hold of a set of photos for just a few motors was a real chore too. Sometimes i'd get lucky, and to those people that have sent me photographs i thank you, more often than not i'd spend hours on end chasing emails around the world. Guess what.....i still am!!! I'm still waiting on a few from over a year ago that seem to have been forgotten about.

As for percentages i think its you that's over analysing things Charles.
I was merely putting it out there with a thought of mine with how or when an SD might have been stamped.You have to go and take things to another level. As and when Hugo gets going he'll see it's full of blanks all over the place, but despite this if you look long enough at the data there are patterns beginning to form.The trouble is there's too many big gaps and too few entries on the list for it to make much sense to anyone.

I like Oyster's idea better with a photo library of however many of these SD's still survive today. 5 or 6 good pictures for each motor would suffice i think. Re-arrange them into chronological order, oldest first newest last, seperate sections for direct drive and bargies etc. and it will be easier to spot all those differences that are tough to see on the data sheets. And let's face it, we like pics better than numbers.

JM numbers are still a foreign language to me, again too many blank spaces and too thinly distributed over the 10,000 to start to see anything forming. And that's just with the few i managed to get any real decent information from. Add into all this the fact that some of these motors will without a shadow of any doubt had some parts "swapped" at some point in time and things become even more confusing.

I'm not having a go at anyone here, just telling the truth of what goes on behind the scenes.

Hugz
B numbers are in sequence (so far) and probably will be for those motors that have these stampings opposite to the serial number. That's easy...
JM's for the moment are not, probably because some of them will have had a "swap". But then again i keep going back to my idea of small batches of components of say 500-1000. Without looking i take it that SD125 is one of yours Hugz, the JM seems a bit off with the others hence my thinking of small batches of different components.Case in point with the flywheels. Inconsistent really... and in truth probably a lost cause trying to find where it leads us. Like i said, if you're lucky enough to acquire data from perhaps 20 motors that are fairly closely grouped it might be possible to work out a few of the finer points with some of these numbers. Are there still enough SD's out there that are yet to be discovered i wonder? It's sometimes a big world we live in and this little forum of ours reaches the 4 corners of the globe. Time will tell.

If i'm being honest Hugz you'd be better off starting again from scratch with your list however you want to set it out. But trust me when i say you will need a lot of space to put it all into a format that will be legible at the end when we see it for the first time. My working spreadsheets are currently at 27 columns wide right now (slightly clipped from my original 35), not every entry is full with every box filled in. I get what i can from this, but i'll tell you now it's not easy most of the time. I'll help where i can of course, so don't think you're on your own with this. I've got way too much time invested in this now to let it go into ruins. I'm just having a breather for now and taking some time out to finish some long term projects.
A fresh pair of eyes might see things that until now may have gone unnoticed.
Happy hunting


Jon