Where sheep may safely graze?
Posted: 07 Mar 2020 19:06
At the NEC's Classic Vehicle Show last year I was talking to two Club members from Ireland who'd dropped by our stand. They were telling me how impressed they were with the A-series engine. "Why particularly? I asked.
"My brother and I were brought up on a remote farm in Southern Ireland," I was told, "and our parents were strictly religious folk who wouldn't let us go to the village to visit our friends on a Sunday. One dreary, wet day we came across an old A-series engine in the barn with nothing on it but its carburettor and oil filter. We wondered whether it would run..."
It seems the lads dragged the lump across the yard, hung it between two trees, fitted a can of petrol higher up in the branches, jammed the carburettor wide open and fired the engine up with a spare battery.
"Boy did that thing go!" they enthusiastically recalled. "Trouble was, with no silencer or indeed exhaust pipe, it was mighty loud." Their father, roused from his Sunday afternoon nap, stormed out of the kitchen to find out what the row was, at which point three things happened in quick succession.
"The engine, which had been shaking for a while, suddenly shed its fly-wheel which shot off across the meadow and through a flock of sheep. Didn't touch one of the darlings! We managed to stall the engine and placated dad. He made us untie the thing and put it back in the barn, then go hunting for the flywheel."
"Did you find it?" I asked.
"Sure we did," they replied. "We bolted it back onto the engine and the following week we sold it to a chap in the village who fitted it to his Minor 1000. Ran for years, it did!"
"My brother and I were brought up on a remote farm in Southern Ireland," I was told, "and our parents were strictly religious folk who wouldn't let us go to the village to visit our friends on a Sunday. One dreary, wet day we came across an old A-series engine in the barn with nothing on it but its carburettor and oil filter. We wondered whether it would run..."
It seems the lads dragged the lump across the yard, hung it between two trees, fitted a can of petrol higher up in the branches, jammed the carburettor wide open and fired the engine up with a spare battery.
"Boy did that thing go!" they enthusiastically recalled. "Trouble was, with no silencer or indeed exhaust pipe, it was mighty loud." Their father, roused from his Sunday afternoon nap, stormed out of the kitchen to find out what the row was, at which point three things happened in quick succession.
"The engine, which had been shaking for a while, suddenly shed its fly-wheel which shot off across the meadow and through a flock of sheep. Didn't touch one of the darlings! We managed to stall the engine and placated dad. He made us untie the thing and put it back in the barn, then go hunting for the flywheel."
"Did you find it?" I asked.
"Sure we did," they replied. "We bolted it back onto the engine and the following week we sold it to a chap in the village who fitted it to his Minor 1000. Ran for years, it did!"