I'm Jeff Ravenhall I've been in the mower industry for what 35 years
started out at Breakwells back in the mid 80s as a mechanic and progressed through into sales
for the last 30 years I've been selling Ransoms primarily and John Deere always concentrating
on the professional side of machinery. Well from my father-in-law- My great passion is
Trusty tractors which you've never heard of but they were used on the Horticultural scene and
they're basically two wheels with an engine on the front and an attachment on the back.
They're about 10 foot long and they weigh about half a ton and they balance on the two wheels
and I've been restoring those collecting them for the last 30 years. My father-in-law used to
talk about them at length and being on the edge of the Vale of Evesham where we are there's a
ready supply of old ones in sheds so why wouldn't I? You could pick them up for a tenner and it was
you know as soon as you finish one put it to one side you go out and find another one
and as you collect them you tend to find more and more interesting bits in them and I've got to the
stage now where I've actually written two books on them so that tended to rule my life I dare say.
For the last 15 years I've been chairman of the Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club.
We've had a website going since I started the club has actually was started back in 93 but at the
moment I'm the longest serving chairman and well all of our club members tend to collect anything
well just having an interest in Horticultural or garden Machinery tends to qualify you for joining.
How did I get involved in this project? Well it's a bit of a long story but
last year at Saltex at the NEC one of our club members Andrew Hall
who's the archivist for the Hall and Duck Trust he was asked to provide a stand of old mowers to
celebrate 75 years of groundsmanship which is what we did. He provided all the mowers but he came to
me to say he hadn't got insurance the NEC wanted insurance for public liability which he hadn't got
so if anyone saw our stand at the NEC you'd have seen VHGMC banners up which
is the club that I'm chairman of and we provided the insurance and the overall
administration and Andrew provided all the machinery. After the show
Andrew was contacted by Shaun at Allett to say we've got a mower can you restore it? Andrew
doesn't tend to have anything newer than 1939 he tends to use the second world war
as his cut off time so he asked me if I knew of anyone I did know someone at the time
who was interested but then he had health issues. I did the initial preparatory work by going to
the factory just to see what state it was in and relayed it back to him but his health deteriorated
so I took this job on myself back in middle of April and it's taken till end of August to get
to this stage but it's been a worthwhile job I find. Well there's so much of the original
machine there the trend these days is to preserve originality rather than make it look new I mean
10-15 years ago in the preservation world a lot of the machinery you'd see at shows would be shiny
brand new but these days the concentration is on originality and preserving it I mean the way I
talk to people at shows you know if they say well iy looks a bit bit mucky yeah but it's original
and the big thing is originality is only there once.
If I'd taken this and shot blasted it and painted it new all its history is gone
so you've got to try and preserve as much of that history as you can and it's it's quite nice to
go to a show with a machine and come across its previous owner and they'll look around
it and have a look at things and oh I put that dent in there yeah my work is done in that case
I've left the dent so yeah it might not look all shiny but you can actually argue the fact that
a lot of the machines that used to win prizes at these shows were overdone they never used
to look as good as that and it got to the stage where some of the winners of prizes
they were pushed in they hadn't got oil in them because it might leak
and things like that well I don't do that anything I do has to work if there's a
lever that does something it has to work so that's what I've done with this and
yeah it should work now every bit as well as when it was first put together.
Challenges yes in trying to keep it as original as possible my first view of it at the factory was
it's got a lot of original paint left on it when I actually came to start doing it
what I'd thought was original paint wasn't original it had been put on there
well the original paint had been covered up with an orange coloured primer
which seemed to have lumps in it and things and then a coat of green paint over the top
so it was very difficult whatever panels I could I I preserved as best I could
but there's some bits that were just beyond it which I've had to over Paint and
that's really how how it's come up you know come to be now some of it's new some of it's old.
The first thing I did was a wanted to know what state the engine was in when it was
first delivered whether I got to take the engine out and rebuild the engine or not so the first
thing was to get the engine going so it was surprising really I cleaned the carburettor and
messed around with the distributor there were various pieces missing out of the distributor and
I'll put all that back to how it should be and lo and behold it started so it's actually
sounded quite well so I did a few adjustments and adjusted the tappets and whatever changed the oil
and then went round making a list of things like fuel pump, spark plugs you know breaker points
all those standard things that you tend to do on a service and I looked on the Reliant Owners Club
website and found that one of the chaps that was advertising parts was quite close down by Malvern
so I went down there with a shopping list and got most of the bits some of it. Some of the
parts were new manifold gaskets and things and rocker cover gaskets but one thing I wanted was
an engine oil filter and the chap there said afraid not I've been cleaning those out with
white spirit for a long time and putting the old ones back on you won't get one of those now
so well I'll put this on our club forum on the blog that I was doing on there and
a couple of days later two of the lads down in Sussex came back and said have
you looked on eBay at this? It was a Morris Minor oil filter and it looked the part
and it was 10 pounds plus a bit of postage so I thought well for 10 pounds I'll chance my arm
and when he came yeah it fitted it was about half an inch longer than the one I'd taken off
but I thought well I'll try it and yes as you can see the cover fits it's very close
but there's about a quarter of an inch gap there and a gap's a gap so why not so yeah
then there's all sorts of little bits and pieces that I've come across you know I've used in the
main I've used local suppliers to recondition bits you know like the radiators had a recore
but the chap that did it has kept the original Maker's plate soldered to the header tank which
I asked him to do which you know if you send it away and get it done on a factory production
line you wouldn't get that kind of service so I've tried to try to use local suppliers wherever I can
same with the Dynamo. I've used this local chat for all the stuff I've used at work and
yeah absolutely mustard so yeah always try and use local people where you can.
Well one of the things that I've found most valuable every now and again I've come across
something that I can't answer something tricky because somebody else has maybe had a mess with
it so I've found it very valuable to have the phone number for Roy Allett he's always
answered the phone no matter when I phoned him and he's always had the answer to hand absolutely
brilliant so you can't you can't put a price on that kind of information and he's always come
you know come up with the answer that I've wanted anyway so thanks very much Roy if you're looking.
Well now it's off to the reception area at the factory at Hixon so yeah I'm gonna have to have
a look for something else to fill my garage now but I hope you take good care of it. It's taken
about four months of my life and there's a lot of me in this now so take good care of it please.
I'll start it up and oh hang on make sure it's not in gear.
Yeah it's a bit cold at the minute but when it warms up it's absolutely perfect
for an engine that hasn't had any work done on it internally it's absolutely brilliant so I can't
emphasize you know the quality of these engines absolutely brilliant.
I'll turn it off petrol's a lot of money these days.