Aussie Curlew

[Hugz]

Check this site out!

http://www.prestonservices.co.uk/traction.html

Gulls are a bit more wallet friendly....

[Taspiper]

Nice!
I've always wanted a traction engine but not at those prices
Couldn't even interest HID in the washing machine...

[vk7hch]

The shed that I am building my boat in has a Marshall traction engine in it, ruddy great thing keeps getting in the way.
Will sneak a piccy in next time I photograph the boat.
Might hang a Seagull of the back for a laugh, just in case the water gets too deep.

Chris

[Hugz]

Wow....photo of traction engine......

[Hugz]

Time to re focus on the Curlew...

Been walkabout

Bush tucker... yay. Enjoyed a succulent Sunday leg of roo roast.

The dingoes got the other leg. I think.....

A bush bath before back to the big smoke.

Been working on my hippy van today. Some silly galah rode his BMW road bike into the starboard back door! Mk 1 transit vans have the hugest truck (read lorry) drum brakes. Stops on a farthing. Has leaf springs on the front too....

Anyway back to this hi tech seagull.

[fortyplus]

Thanks for posting the videos of the running Curlew, I don't think I've ever seen one in the flesh so found it very interesting. It reminded me very much of my 90 while being very different in the detail. While it is a great outboard, I cannot help but think how visually unappealing that motor must have been to the average person in 1991. I much prefer the look of my 40 +'s to my 90, (pure nostalgia) but the Curlew makes my 90 look almost attractive. It's a shame with the progress made on the motor internals etc. there wasn't a way to move the whole concept forward in the same manner and recapture the visual appeal the original motors had in their day. With the prices they were selling for new and the overall appearance, it's easy to see why Seagull could not recapture their glory days of huge sales. I often wonder what they would have needed to come up with, even if money was no object, to have stayed afloat. Was there a market for a truly modern Seagull based on the original concept or would it just have ended up being a Japanese clone?. While much quieter the Curlew still has that distinctive Seagull sound.

Has anyone ever tried restricting the coolant flow on any of the earlier Seagull models, it always seems to me they might run better and burn cleaner if they ran warmer, but having said that I think the uniqueness of the Seagull design is in things like it's cooling system where it's designed to run cool for reliability, longevity and simplicity rather than worrying about "refinements" with the inevitable associated complications - that ultimately is what makes them such great little motors.

[Collector Inspector]

Huggy, what a great time in the bush Mate. I go south to my place and do exactly that if wildlife presents itself.

How things should be aye?

Now, a quote in that "Has anyone ever tried restricting the coolant flow on any of the earlier Seagull models"

Well maybe not restricting but some of the SDs have a hole extra to relieve the amount of water flow before it got to the top end. Little hole in the side of the water pump housing did the trick so no over cooling.

A rather charming engineering solution I think.

B

[charlesp]

Seagull never achieved really huge sales, their best ever was only a tiny fraction of the competition. I have a Kingfisher here which I must say is a very quiet motor, much quieter than a Mercury 3.3 2 stroke.

The hole in the SD water pump housing is a strange one. the other Charles and I have talked at length about it, and we have quizzed people who ought to know, but we don't have a definitive answer.

I can't quite embrace the idea of drilling a hole in the water pump housing to reduce the cooling, I mean why would you want to do that in wartime? Surely it was a cool running motor anyway, it was designed to have a certain flow, why change it. Surely it's more likely that a pontoon barge would require a slow running motor where it may require more coolant flow rather than less.

Other theories have involved possibly an inspection hole to check the impeller is turning, an access hole to allow a bit of wire to clean silt out of it (I don't buy those two!) Any other theories are welcome!

[fortyplus]

The hole was drilled to confuse the Germans. Should the motors fall in to enemy hands, it was figured they'd spend so much time trying to work out what it was for, it would distract them from their plans to conquer the world

It does make you wonder why you would do anything to reduce cooling on something used in a military application where use and abuse is likely to be the norm and any refinements and possible emissions benefits would hardly be of priority, heck with a 8:1 fuel ratio and 30 weight oil they probably provided their own smoke screen.

In their prime in the 70's Seagull were reputed to be selling 80,000 motors a year, it would be interesting to compare this to how many they sold in 1991. In the 70's on the Welsh coast, at least where we boated, they were by far the most common type of motor to be seen as an auxiliary on pocket cruisers etc. They must have had a big share of this part of the market, but they had no other offerings in larger hp's so their overall sales would have been hit accordingly. It seems a lot of the other brands had the benefit of the huge US market as well, which again Seagull could not really compete in due to only having small hp motors whose positive benefits would be less valuable when so much boating is done on lakes etc. Here in UT it seems like a 9.9hp motor is considered a small trolling motor and is seen as a secondary motor on the back of many boats of about 20' in length (rather over the top to my mind) - with the bigger is best attitude there must have been relatively few who would have given any Seagull a second glance, other than sailboat owners on the coasts. I guess in the end Seagull had a limited range which ended up appealing to only a certain kind of mindset and so were destined to end up with production volumes that would increasingly have made them less economic to produce, resulting in prices that would only double down on the problems. It seemed to me in the circle of people I knew in the 70's that when motors of what might be termed the modern style started to gain a hold and people found they could zip round in their little tenders etc. at much greater speeds than previously ever imagined, the smaller Seagulls quickly lost their market. I remember a local dealer selling Archimedes Penta motors seemed to clean up pretty quickly, when people saw what their 3.9 motor or the 4 horse motor could do on a small dinghy - somehow people went from being happy just "putting" a long on the water, to the need for speed.

[Buzzook]

Yeah, well the original Watermans and Evinrudes were called 'rowboat motors' and were designed to replace the the efforts of the oarsman...

...in other words, making it *easier* to get from point A to point B, rather than necessarily any quicker.

When you had previously had to row 10 or 20 miles up the lake to get to your campsite, but now could sit back and enjoy the scenery (if not the peace and quiet of before) it was way too tempting for most people.

Ditto, once bigger motors came along, people would try it, like it, and so no going "back"...

And greater disposable incomes meant larger and more 'flash' motors could be afforded, probably not the case in postwar austerity Britain!

[charlesp]

'To confuse the germans...'

Pure genius!

[fortyplus]

A lot of things changed in the era when prosperity was achieved some years after WWII. It was similar in the motorcycle industry, when walking was the norm, riding a motorcycle in Britain's often inclement weather was still pure luxury, but then affordable cars combined with higher incomes, and motorcycle sales plummeted. Coupled with the appalling management of the time, this led to the ultimate demise of the British motorcycle industry, as by the time the Japanese really started to get into the market all our manufacturers were stuck in a rut building old fashioned models without the finances to develop up to date models that could compete. To a degree Seagull's demise was similar, they had a great product that was very successful at a point in time, but were unable to adapt to the changes taking place in the market, not just in terms of competition, but what the vast majority of people really wanted - they may still have been making what people needed, but not necessarily what they wanted. The idea of moving around at hull speed, which had been a great improvement over rowing and makes great sense, did not have the same obvious appeal as zipping along with your little dinghy on the plane. While Seagull retained unique features for pushing larger and heavier boats, I think they ultimately they were not as "user friendly for the masses" as the more modern designs and so still lost out in the area of the market where they still had an edge in practical terms.

[Hugz]

While it is a great outboard, I cannot help but think how visually unappealing that motor must have been to the average person in 1991.

I think it is only now that we like the nostalgic aspect of seagulls and in their day reliability, cost etc would have been a deciding factor. I could always wack on an early magneto and a brass tank but I like to keep things original. I've, surprisingly, become quite attached to this motor and looking forward to having it on the water.

Here is an idea I picked up from the bush. Seeing I have drained the curlew tank back into a petrol container I need to filter it.....

Coffee filters. Aussie bushcraft! Pretty obvious really but I never thought of it.

Huggy, what a great time in the bush Mate. I go south to my place and do exactly that if wildlife presents itself.

How things should be aye?

B

Too right mate... Had some top damper with the Roo and bunya nut gravy!

[fortyplus]

Hugz, I agree on the nostalgia aspect and how you can grow attached to even the more "ugly duckling" Seagulls, their character, simplicity and reliability shine through when you've used them for a while and becomes even more apparent when you start doing some basic repairs/maintenance on some of the other brands.

I just imagine in my mind running a chandlers back in 1991 and having a 1991 model Seagull next to a 1991 Johnson and trying to persuade the average punter why he should buy the Seagull - a hard sell when the visual aspect plays such a big part in people's decisions.

[charlesp]

You may be astonished by the tiny numbers of Seagulls being sold in 1991.

The decline was very rapid from the mid seventies.

In 1986 the total number of Seagull motors exported to New Zealand and Australia was 240
The following year it was 225.

By 1991 there wouldn't be any sitting in chandlers' showrooms.