Saving Old Seagulls

"What say the rest of you"...

For what my opinion is worth ( and I realise that for many that will be very little), I am getting a distinct impression that the Seagull company had a very slapdash approach to everything. If it was available on the shop floor, it would be used? Even if it wasn't actually meant to be used on the actual engine being fitted together? Numbering parts seems to have been done on a 'if the apprentice is in, the flywheels get stamped, if he's thrown a sickie, they dont' basis.
Is the lack of factory information down to records being lost, or records just not consistently recorded?

Seagull didn't stamp any flywheels JM numbers & the later numbers were all stamped by Villiers.

Henk wrote:"What say the rest of you"...

For what my opinion is worth ( and I realise that for many that will be very little), I am getting a distinct impression that the Seagull company had a very slapdash approach to everything. If it was available on the shop floor, it would be used? Even if it wasn't actually meant to be used on the actual engine being fitted together? Numbering parts seems to have been done on a 'if the apprentice is in, the flywheels get stamped, if he's thrown a sickie, they dont' basis.
Is the lack of factory information down to records being lost, or records just not consistently recorded?

Maybe so or not so......................it is this kind of thing that keeps some of us awake at nights.

Seagulls are a dingo type of bird................................

All good.

BnC

I remember Charles P telling us some time ago that seagull used to maintain a record of every engine number, right back to day one, but at some point all the old records went into the skip, when they were trying to modernise the company.

Im not sure I would describe seagull as slapdash, most production seems to be fairly structured, with fairly specific change points.

That 511/**** number you're showing is a villiers stamping.
The flywheel date (if it's got one in the first place) will be about 1/3 the size of these numbers. They're very small so you need to look hard.
Some have them, some don't.



Jon

Slapdash is not a word that fits in with the Seagull name, any company that has built somewhere around a million outboard motors of numerous flavours, must be fairly well organised to stay alive for 52 years!

The staff members that CharlesP & I questioned, referred to the books as "build books",& the way we were told it worked was, an order arrived from distributor X for 10 number 40+'s, 6 long shaft & 4 short & was entered into the build books, 10 powerheads were taken from the 40 storage & the correct length exhaust & water delivery tubes were attached, then the appropriate length lower units were bolted on, then off to the test tanks, where 20ish minutes later after passing all the tests for that style of motor (hot/cold starts, tickover, revs & cooling under full load, a complete once over), to ensure it was good enough to be delivered.
Then back to the build book where it's serial number was stamped onto the crankcase.

The record production number we were quoted was over 7000 in one month in the early 70's, that's around 300 a day, circa 90,000 that year.

We were told the build book contained all the technical details for an individual unit, including who ordered it.

As many of the staff (engine builders & lower unit builders) were on peace work & didn't get paid if the unit failed the test tank or had a warranty return, Seagull's record keeping must have been pretty good.

I'm almost glad none of the build books survived, just imagine how many emails the custodian would get asking about SJP *****, it would be a full time job!

7000 a month is pretty impressive production! If only they had reinvested in new products at that point