Villiers engine bought at Beaulieu

[daviddale]

Hello all, this is my first post on your forum, I'm on the Bantam one and an old vintage garden machinery one too, I live in the south midlands northamptonshire and am a lawn mower mechanic/tree surgeon. I bought an old seized up Villiers bike engine in May's Beaulieu auto jumble, the no's on it are: 271A 47185D, there is an f inside a hexagon and a V inside another and the letters HC with an arrow pointing down and D36, the matching No's on the crankcase halves are L92. I have managed to strip it right out as the bottom end was almost seized too, have got the cases apart and main bearings off, piston still won't move although at bottom of bore, tried wd40 and heat, wooden block and big hammer etc any ideas?

[Rex]

Try soaking it in Diesel for a couple of weeks, and if you can rig up a screw thread to apply pressure while it's soaking, so much the better..

[rogerwilko]

Why totrure yourself. Just throw the horrible thing in the fire and save yourself the trouble!

[33d6]

The identifying number is the 271A 47185D, the others are internal factory production numbers. The relevant part of the number that identifies what the engine was intended to be installed in is the 271A prefix. Unfortunately the remaining Villiers records are incomplete and 271A doesn't appear in them so that is a dead end.
Villiers had got up to similar numbers by the early 50's so assuming it is a bike engine with attached primary transmission and gearbox etc, it is probably either a 125cc 10D or 197cc 6E of which the 6E is the preferred one but most of them died with their boots on racing in go-carts in the early days of the sport. 10D survivors seem to be more common as they avoided that fate.
As far as gettting your engine apart, why fuss? Engine spares are available across the counter. Just break the piston up and remove it. Same with the big end, you'll want to replace it so why worry about loosening it up?
Finally, don't worry about Roger Wilko, he's a Matchless owner so a bit defensive about old bangers.
Cheers,

[daviddale]

Hello all, thank you for the interesting replies and support. Piston is small compared to my D7 Bantam's so I imagine it is a 125, funnily enough when 33d6 mentioned 6e I do now remember someone at Beaulieu mentioning some such number as I passed by struggling to get it back to the car! I will try to post some pics, all forums seem to have their own preferred method of up loads and they can take a bit of getting used to. Thanks again, David.

[33d6]

Hi again David,
Standard bore of the 10D is 50mm which may help you ID your engine. As the engine is solid there isn't much point in getting concerned about the stroke is there.
The bore of the 6E is 59mm and the slightly later 150cc models is 57mm.
Villiers dropped the 125 class in the first half of the 50's. I suspect they didn't sell as well as they hoped. Not only did the 10D compete with the Bantam which was a runaway success they also competed against their own E series engines. Most manufacturers made an identical bike for both capacity of engine and it seemed many riders decided the small difference in costs of buying and running a 125 compared to an identical but much peppier 197 engined bike wasn't worthwhile so the 125 Villiers faded away.  Later in the 50's Villiers introduced new 150, 175 and 250 ranges but they never went back to a 125.
Cheers,