Saving Old Seagulls

Good morning.

I've recently become the proud(?) owner of a bargain bag of Seagulls, having been keeping an eye open for an affordable, saveable restoration project for a while, and thought that a good second move (first being to contact John at SOS to arrange manuals and spares books) would be to join this forum and introduce myself and my engines.

I'm an engineer, designing mineral process plants by day but indulging my interest in quirky and eccentric machinery in my (limited) spare time. I've brought occasional cars and motorcycles back from the dead in the past, but full time employment, family responsibilities and a raft of other interests ensure that restoration of complete vehicles is not really feasible at the moment.

The time factor and an interest in 2-strokes led, almost inevitably, to the discovery of the Seagull and a desire to obtain one as a relatively simple, cheap project.

Last weekend, my local free ads paper showed four for sale at a price I could afford not 10 km from me. A phone call revealed one alleged runner, one with a rusted out block and two incomplete examples.

When I went to have a look, the "runner" proved to be seized solid, the block on the second disintegrated under my fingernails and the incomplete units were, well, incomplete. An honest description for a change, apart from the seizure. A big box of "spares" accompanied the engines.

To be fair, the vendor was sufficiently embarrassed by the seizure that he didn't bargain too hard and I was shortly on my way home with a vanload of neglected British engineering.

A rummage through the box revealed the usual story of a collection of all the discarded, broken bits from the engines' decades in use.

Checking the engine numbers against the SOS list indicated that I'd just bought a nearly running 1956ish Forty, a rusty 1968 Century, an incomplete 1963 Century and an incomplete 1948 102 that started life clutchless but had grown one at some point. The parts available indicate that I might have three viable engines, offering three degrees of restoration difficulty.

A bit of triage resulted in the Forty being chosen as the first project. First task was to attempt to unsieze it. A couple of spoons of kerosene were poured down the spark plug hole and left to soak in.

Whilst things were brewing, I had a look at the carb. It appeared complete but suffering from a build up of crud. The throttle slide was also seized. Into a bath of acetone it went, and there it remains at the moment.

After a couple of days to let the kero do its work, occasionally twiddling the flywheel, I decided that it was worth trying a little gentle spanner pressure on the flywheel nut. To my delight it moved, and the engine was soon turning over happily, making encouraging gurgling and slurping noises.

More in hope than anticipation I screwed the spark plug onto the end of the lead, earthed it to the head, wrapped the starter rope round the pulley and gave it a pull. I was rewarded, not with a spark at the electrodes, but with a jolt up the arm that suggested that the Villiers flywheel mag is healthier than it has any right to be after 50 years. Ow.

But for the lack of a viable carb, I reckon it would have gone. Not bad after a decade at the back of a shed.

As this is a restoration project and in view of the seizure, I decided to take the head and barrel off to inspect the state of play in the bore. The head was very tight on the studs but yielded eventually, to reveal a perfect bore, a good piston with stuck rings and a barrel with almost no serious corrosion. The only significant problem seems to be that the (sheet steel) head gassket has suffered a leak from the combustion chamber to one of the studs, which has resulted in a cavity being eroded out of the ally head. As the cavity doesn't impinge on the combustion chamber I'm contemplating gouging back to clean metal and filling it with one of the proprietary "liquid metal" epoxies, before mounting the head in the lathe and taking the lightest possible skim over the whole mating face to ensure flatness.

The barrel has gone into my electrolytic derusting bath to get out what little crud it contains, prior to a proper inspection. The state of the barrel and piston suggest to me that, in spite of its advanced years, this engine has done very little work and has rarely, if ever, seen salt water. This is encouraging as it leads me to hope that restoration will involve a thorough clean (internally and externally), proper inspection and then careful reassembly using all stainless fasteners. Fingers crossed.

I'm aiming for a useable engine rather than a perfect, original finish, although I'm not intending to do anything too outlandish.

Then, of course, I need to find or build an appropriate boat to hang it on.

Welcome to the flock.
I also own a 1966 century with a rusted out block. It was saved by a combination of welding the corners back on and screwing a plate over the missing section. The rusted out section was only the water jacket side, the one with the nice writing on! The actual cylinder was ok and still has good compression.
It was running very well until I started "borrowing" parts from it.
Sadly I have tried getting rid of it but no-one wants it.
Maybe it's time to rebuild it again.
regards
Phil

Hi Hugh, Welcome.

I'm getting the impression that sourcing interesting seagulls is a little easier here than England. Why I'm not sure.... perhaps the interest in them as collectables is still in its infancy.

You did well to get the head off your forty. I've yet to get a head off without shearing the bolts. I usually remove barrel with head attached.

No doubt you will get the bug! Your expertise as an engineer will no doubt be appreciated if we can call upon you for some assistance.

Let see if we can find a Marston in Australia..... there has to be a few lurking around.

Cheers Hugo.

Hugo, on my Forty, there are through-studs from the crankcase all the way to the head. The nuts came off easily after a soak in penetrating oil. The head and barrel then required some gentle work with a rubber hammer to slide them off the studs.

Closer inspection revealed that what I thought was erosion due to a blowing head gasket may actually be some sort of electrolytic corrosion as all four stud holes in the head were affected to a greater or lesser extent. I bit the bullet and milled them all back to clean ally and have filled with epoxy filler. When I can muster the patience to get busy with a dial indicator I'll set the head up in the lathe and skim it back flat. Depending on how much I have to take off, I might have to adjust the register where the barrel spigot locates too. I'm not too worried about potential effects on compression ratio. The Seagull appears to be a very low comp motor as standard so I wouldn't anticipate a small increase having any detectable effect.

I do intend to replace the head and base gaskets, although as they are unavailable I'll have to go ahead and make my own. They appear to be plain old 16 gauge mild steel so it shouldn't be too hard to chew them out from scratch.

As for Seagull availability in Australia, our local free ads paper usually holds one or two, and although some of the prices asked are ludicrous, some appear reasonable. It's hard to tell without seeing the motors though as "good condition" is the usual description and, here in WA, that particular phrase is, at best, meaningless.

I'll need to keep an eye open for possible sources of 102cc barrels when I make a start on my century.

Hi HughB

Welcome I'm from Perth as well there are another couple of us in Perth. I am trying to organise a bit of a get together of fellow outboard nuts here. I think I know the group of gulls you had purchased, as I spoke to the vendor after you had got them. I have a friend who has a carburettor exchange service in Morley, he kindly lets me use his cleaning baths to clean my carbs also very handy for fuel taps as well. I try to get my ali parts wet bead blasted at a place in Bayswater. There is another bloke next door to him that does a very good job of sandblasting great for restoring bronze.