flywheel dates

[tambikeboy]

R63-a61 m851 = august 1951

R63-a61 m1251 = December 1951


Now the tricky one

R63-a61 m-10-9 = ???????

[headdownarseup]

The "R63-A61M" part of the number is a generic numbering system used by villiers.
The last 3 or 4 numbers are what gives you the actual build date of that particular magneto.

So
8 51 = AUGUST 1951
12 51 = DECEMBER 1951
10 9 = OCTOBER 1959

Bear in mind that BS were probably ordering 100's of magnetos at a time direct from Villiers, so the numbers on the flywheels don't necessarily mean they correspond to the ENGINE SERIAL NUMBER as well. There probably would have been a slight delay of a month or so from the magneto being completed by Villiers, and the magneto actually being fitted to a seagull at the BS works. (i tend to work on a 3 month variable for this to allow for the BS workers to fill the order books. it fits in very well with the rest of my research)

There are other ways of identifying how old a flywheel is , or from which time period it belongs to.
Example :
Early villiers flywheels from around 46 up to about 50-51 seem to be finished much better on the "spoked" area compared to later flywheels.
If you have one to hand, take a look and you'll see it's almost as if someone has spent time actually grinding away the casting flash from the spokes. Later flywheels seem to be left "rough" with a more rounded appearance to the spokes, but still FLAT where it needs to be for the flywheel cover.

Baseplates change as well.
From the earlier (post war) baseplates with NO RIM on the bottom, to the second generation "rimless", flywheels follow a similar set of changes.
At around 50-51 the baseplate changes from the "flat top" to what i term as the "second generation rimless" type. Some of these ignitions still have the "better finished flywheels", same numbering sequence too.
Later still (about 54 ish) we start to see the first of the "HALF ROUND RIMMED" baseplates, but this time the flywheels have been left "rough" in the spoked area.
This combination then continues to the late 50's/early 60's where there's another change to the baseplate to a 3/4 ROUND RIM and at some point the numbering on the flywheels stops as well. This carries on right up to about 1967 when the villiers ignition is dropped in favour of the gold coloured Wipac type.

In a nutshell it's not unusual to see older baseplates with newer flywheels and vice versa as literally anything could have been swapped around by now. (often its the baseplates that get swapped because the coils often fail but the original flywheel is kept, hence the discrepancy with the baseplates not entirely making sense with the rest of the ignition system)
The trick here is to try and make sure that all the parts "match" as far as a date is concerned.

Hope this helps Tam.

Jon

[Gannet]

Jon,
I am not certain that you correct in saying that 10 -9 code represents October 1959.

A flywheel date code of 10 -9 probably is October 1949.

My F201 has a flywheel code of 10 -8, which I believe corresponds to October 1948. The engine was produced sometime in 1950 and possibly in earlyish 1949. Serial number 1325 was the last one produced in calendar year 1949.

Additionally my F1207 has a flywheel code of 1 - 9 which I believe represents January 1949. The engine being produced sometime in 1949.

Did late !950s engines have a two digit date code for the year? Certainly samples that I have looked at have two digits for the year ie 1955 has a year date code of 55. Is this always the case?

Jeremy

[tambikeboy]

Jeremy i think you may be closer to the mark as crank casing numbers tell me 1951....been wrong before though.

[headdownarseup]

Maybe, maybe not!
Tam.
You need to look at the other tell tale signs on the rest of your seagull to find out more. Serial number on the crankcase, the type of baseplate, the type of flywheel etc. etc. as well as what you already know to be correct with this engine.If your seagull was produced in 1951 then a corresponding date on the flywheel should read the same YEAR stamping. Iv'e tried to explain several times before about the VERY SLIGHT difference with some of these villiers flywheels before with a lot of people ending up scratching their heads. You have to look very closely at the SIDES of each of the 3 "spokes" to be able to identify an earlier flywheel from a later flywheel. If it looks like the sides have been ground nice and flat and the outer radius (the bit we normally polish) appears to be much squarer than others, chances are that your flywheel is from a FLAT TOP (1st generation "rimless) ignition. These run from 46/51 thereabouts which ties in with your findings Tam. The baseplate should also be WITHOUT a rim around the bottom. Careful as there's 2 different types of "rimless" baseplates. Which one has your motor got? Pics will help me a bit.To be a couple of years different with what you know about the engine serial number against the flywheel date might indicate that someone has been at your motor in the past with the spanners. Just a flywheel date is hardly anything to go on Tam! It's the finer (smaller) details that often get overlooked.
Get some pics up of everything you can showing the baseplate, the flywheel particularly the spoked area WITHOUT the round cover on it, engine serial number etc.
Something doesn't sound quite right with it.

Jeremy, you could be right, but then again we BOTH could be wrong on this. Just had a quick look at some of my "spares" and the earliest 1950's flywheel i have reads as 7 50, which if we've got this right means JULY 1950.(it's actually one of your's Jeremy that i've straightened for you)
For it to be any earlier than 1950 then it would (possibly) have a 3 digit year number as you suggest with your F201.

Jon

[Keith.P]

Interesting Jon, I know what you mean, the older flywheels have less of a taper on the top edge of the flywheel, not always that obvious on some, but the taper around the three holes is a big giveaway.

IMG_1318.JPG

I had some laying about, one may not be an original seagull flywheel.
They also start with R63, R82, R88 flywheel numbers, so would the 46/51 style flywheel just start with R63?

[tambikeboy]

Fvp8035 has been certified as original (what's with the holes) all rimless flywheels. .....hope this helps china's. .

[Gannet]

Jon,
Interesting stuff. Especially your comments about the subtle differences in the machining of the flywheels.
Yes, thanks for straightening that flywheel for me. Much appreciated. It belongs to FV2682 and a flywheel date of 7 - 50 (ie July 1950) is about right for it and so it is a reasonable assumption that it left BS with that flywheel.

Tam,
I have picked up the flywheel dates from your FVPs. I hadn't previously recorded flywheel dates for FVP8250 nor for FVP80355.
FVP8035 has a flywheel older than its serial number indicates, but stock rotation at BS was unlikely to be fault free! Although what the exact reason is for that earlier flywheel we will never know. The flywheel dates are not really significant in any way. Just interesting to those who are .......interested!

Cheers,

Jeremy

[tambikeboy]

Good work Jeremy keep it up thanks.....

[headdownarseup]

Tam
The holes drilled into the top are where the flywheel was originally balanced at the factory. Most of them have at least a couple of holes somewhere (even the wipac versions have them) with some having more holes than others. Perfectly normal and nothing to worry about

I still can't help thinking that something is not quite right with FVP8035.
The serial number indicates quite nicely this motor was made towards the end of 1951.(nothing unusual there) BUT the flywheel has a date from approx. 2 years before this.
As Jeremy has mentioned, stock rotation at BS possibly wasn't of great concern at the time this motor was put together way back in 1951....... but even so, 2 years is still a long time for a magneto to be sitting on a shelf in the stores before it was actually fitted to an engine. I would have thought that a small company such that BS were in those days would want very little in the way of spare parts sitting around on shelves costing them money with no return on their outlay. Just enough to fill the order book with a few to spare then re-order as the stocks became depleted to the point that it was necessary. It would have cost BS a fair few quid as part of the contract with Villiers just to order lets say 200 complete magnetos ( would this have been enough for 1 months production?)just to have them in readiness for when they're actually going to be used to fill the order books. Cash was tight for most companies back then (nothing much changes today it seems) so i can't help thinking that maybe, JUST MAYBE someone has been there before you. I havn't got a time machine to go back to 1951 so i guess we might never really know for sure.
I just don't know with this. Something doesn't add up right!
Now maybe you can see my concerns with this. It might be perfectly genuine in that a few motors might have had magnetos fitted from the very back of the shelf with an older date stamped into them which when you start looking at the serial number for the engine, the 2 don't quite match somehow. Is this one of those motors i wonder? ( a friday afternoon seagull?)
I suppose it could happen!

Still a very nice little seagull all the same Tam. Nice job (i wish i had one)

Jon

[headdownarseup]

Keith

R63 i think appears on all of the "flat top" flywheels, maybe even a few after this as well with the SECOND GENERATION "rimless" baseplates.

My camera's busted otherwise i'd take some pics to try and help explain things a bit better.

Your brass flywheel in the pics i'm not sure about. I've seen these types of flywheels on old agricultural equipment before such as Alleyn scythes and such like powered by villiers engines and ignitions. Never seen one on a seagull before . Actually i tell a lie, one of the blokes from down under has a "steampunked 102" with everything brass/bronze on it including the flywheel but i think this was a very specialist job to alter the central boss to make it fit the seagull crankshaft.

R82 and R88 might be villiers way of type identification between the different models. Again another of those small detail differences between flywheels of certain ages.
Interesting to some of us, boring to others i know, and to be honest there's only a very few of us that are that *&nal about it anyway to make any real difference.
But we all do what we do in our own different ways

Jon

[Charles uk]

Jon let's discuss Seagull's ignition purchases & usage in 1950.

Villiers were in Wolverhampton & Seagull were in Poole (end of a branch line), almost everything was delivered by steam train to the goods shed that was next to just about every station, & this carried on right into the 60's, in 1950 Seagull produced about 3000 FV/FVP's & probably 3 times as many 102's (what is your data telling us about the annual 102 production figures), so at least 1000 ignitions a month, at this volume of production the minimum ignition stock level would have to be around 300 to cover them over a week of bad snowfall or rail repairs, this 300 might have sat on the shelf for a couple of years before someone thought about rotating them for a new batch.

So I think it's entirely possible that a flywheel a couple of years old could end up on a later crank.

CharlesP told me several stories about the vast numbers that Seagull bought components in, just to get the best discount levels, this seems to have happened right up to the closure, as John Williams said when he went there in 95ish, outside there were lots of skips full of new props that were going to the scrap man, for melting down.

[Keith.P]

The Brass flywheel is off another Villiers motor, but with a modification to work on a Seagull, R62 and only months older then the 1951 seagull one.
An ignition for £6, as per the parts book, that's in old money, not old enough to remember 1972, so even with whatever reductions seagull got, it's still a lot of money for the time.

[headdownarseup]

Not wishing to get too pedantic here Chas. i have some interesting paperwork in front of me showing production numbers for ALL motors from 46 to end of year 62. Whether or not this paperwork turns out to be accurate enough we'll have to wait and see. (Jeremy knows which paperwork i'm on about as he's got the same information that i'm looking at )

Specifically numbers of F's FV's etc produced during the year 1950 add up to 3016 units. For 102's produced in the same year they add up to 7473 units. Add the 2 together for the total production in 1950 and we get 10489 units of 102's (in all flavours) and the "little model 40's".

Divide 10489 into 12 months and we get almost 875 as an average for each month.
With me so far.

My GUESS (and it was only a guess so please no bad press about it) of approx. 300 a month was perhaps a little low to say the least.
Without a proper discussion about this (and it's all good by the way) i end up going round in circles without any credible information to go on.
If i don't ask these questions i'll never know for the rest of my research.

I fully understand that the transport network back in those days relied HEAVILY on the rail network (and perhaps the canals to a lesser extent) Supply and demand by the cheapest options available at the time. I get that.

Going back to what i said earlier about stock rotation, i said perhaps it wasn't of great concern at the time for BS. Allowing for bad weather etc. i fully expect that any good company would have a contingency plan in place for such occasions. (you'd be daft not to)
I used to work in a greengrocers many MANY moons ago and stock rotation (for obvious reasons) was paramount.
Not quite so important with automotive parts that don't really deteriorate from sitting on shelves. I understand that too.

My question relating to what we've skipped over previously is this.
In your honest opinion Chas, do you think a fairly small company such that BS were in those days would have allowed lets say 800-1000 ignition units just to sit there doing nothing when there's orders to be filled and money to be made and wages to pay. I KNOW i know, the rail network is mostly reliable to a point (not like nowadays ) but even so aside from a hefty discount from the supplier that's a lot of investment with no immediate return especially in a time of hardship when rationing is still going on for everybody. I wonder if there was a sale or return agreement between Villiers and BS.
Companies both big and small will always need to make some sort of profit just to stay afloat. No different today. BS i'm sure were no different in the 1950's as with any other business across the uk at that time. You gotta do what you can with what you've got.

I'm just a little skeptical that's all (or should that read "in the dark" over certain things relating to BS)
I have to ask these questions to fully understand what was going on back then.
Unless someone really knows about this stuff (and i mean REALLY KNOW about this) it'll be wasted on the next generation that reads this.
I just like to be as thorough as i can be. I'm sure you can understand that. We might end up waiting for an awful lot longer before Chas.P finally gets his book out on the subject.
I'd just like to know as much as is reasonably possible before the older generation scuttle off and there's nobody left to answer the questions.
I do my bit the best way i know how. You do your bit your way. Hopefully we can agree somewhere in the middle.

It's all good.

Jon

[Charles uk]

I've had that paper work for more than 10 years Jon, that's some of the data we used for the engine identifier.

I was just trying to illustrate a small portion of Seagull's supply chain in the 1950's & wasn't painting a photograph, so didn't feel I had to be too exact, sorry.

I'm certainly with you Jon , perhaps a little in front.