[SEL] For those who were wondering...

[Patrick Livingstone]

Baby¹s room is done & Petra has enough toys already ;)
There are six (possibly 7) pushrod Austral¹s known to survive, two are
verticals and there are four horizontals (and only two of these are
portables). There are seven engines confirmed to be converted/refurbished
pushrod engines and no two of these are the same. The pushrod engines were a
bit of a failure so R-T licensed Carter¹s patent (i.e. Blackstone) and the
Austral sideshaft engine was born in 1908 with engine No.217. It is thought
that R-T bought back (or took as trade in) the pushrod engines and either
broke them up or rebuilt them but I have not confirmed this. What is
interesting is that the factory waited three years to rebuild the pushrod
engines with non of them re-emerging from the factory until late 1911.
Ronaldson Bros. & Tippett were fantastic salesmen. They were not shy of
boasting (even if it was not true). In the 20¹s they boasted that they had
made 300 of the early engines before Œimproving¹ on the design. This was
certainly not true, with the first engine being No.51 and the first
sideshaft engine being No.217 simple maths says they did not built (or even
sell) 300 pushrod engines.
I am busily researching and updating the Austral register as well as writing
a few articles for TOMM on Australs. It gives me something to do before the
baby comes ;)
Patrick


On 17/10/10 3:19 PM, "Rob Skinner" <rob at rustyiron.com> wrote:

> 
> On Oct 16, 2010, at 8:45 PM, Patrick Livingstone wrote:
> 
>> For those who were wondering what I was selling engines to buy:
>> http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/myaustral755.html
> 
> 
> I was wondering, but wasn't going to ask.  I kind of assumed you were selling
> engines to buy wallpaper for the baby's room, or chew toys for Petra.  She
> sure is a neat engine.
> 
> Do you know how many pushrod engines exist?  How many were converted?  Was the
> pushrod engine a dud, necessitating the conversion, or did R&T just have
> really good salesmen?
>  
>  
>      <http://www.rustyiron.com/>
>      <http://www.rustyiron.com/PhoneRob.html>
>  
> 
> 



Patrick M Livingstone
Leichhardt NSW
http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/Index.html