Coleby Junior Restoration .. Complete

[ssorthiek]

I thought I would start a new thread showing the almost final results of a Coleby Junior rebuild. The serial number is 614 and almost certainly one of the first Colebys with a JAP engine and therefore must have been built in 1948. The before and after photos first and then a bit of a description of what I have found out about this Coleby and some photos of the rebuild. I haven’t been so interested in taking photos of the rebuild in recent months, my interest has been getting the thing running. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

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[ssorthiek]

So I made a claim that 614 must have been one of the first Colebys with a JAP 4/3 engine. How can I make that claim? There are two things that lead me to this. The serial number of the JAP engine is 3|C|92080|FU which implies the engine was manufactured between September 1948 and September 1949. We also have early original photos of Coleby Juniors date stamped 17/9/48 being demonstrated by my grandfather at the Surrey Machinery Demonstration, Richmond Park. Previous photos are of a Coleby with a Villiers 25A engine being used with a Seed Drill on New Bran Farm, Swanscombe, Kent, with Mr Tickle operating the machine.
Further and more convincing evidence is associated with the gearbox and clutch arrangements. The clutch lever on the Villiers 25A machines was much higher up than the JAP 4/3 models. Each Coleby gearbox has a lug cast into the casing to mount the clutch cable adjuster. From the picture below, you can clearly see the gearbox was intended to be for a Coleby with a Villiers 25A engine and has been modified for a JAP 4/3 engine. The more cynical amongst us would suggest that the engine has been changed at some point but this would have involved a new clutch assembly which doesn’t seem credible. Furthermore the lug would have likely been tapped out to accept the clutch cable adjustment, but this is just a cast hole.
This does leave me wondering where the serial numbers started on JAP 4/3 models. It might be that they started at 600 or 601 making this the 13th or 14th off the production line with this engine. If anyone has any further information, please let me know.

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[ssorthiek]

GEARBOX
When I received the Coleby it was in a dreadful state. The engine was largely complete but the cowl was missing. The gearbox was in a dreadful state as well and this is the first port of call to start the restoration. You can just make out that the bearing housing that is normally held in with 5/16” Whit countersunk screws was held in with ¼” Whit bolts. This resulted in a huge crack in the gearbox. All the bearings were in a state of disrepair and the oil had emulsified. The whole gearbox was what is technically known as “a mess” as can be seen from the photos.
Considerable work was undertaken to weld the gearbox up (aluminium casting) with subsequent drilling and tapping of the filled in holes, the PTO was re-machined, the whole casing, gears and components was cleaned, bearing replaced reassembled and then repainted.
One interesting thing to note is that the handlebars are designed to have a central position, along with a left and right position so that the operator does not need to walk in the furrows. This was a patented idea. However, the spigot has rusted solidly but after considerable work this was freed. My other Coleby purchased from Kent, has the same issue, but having worked out how this all worked on this Coleby, I was able to free this as well and added the necessary levers to the handle bars.

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[ssorthiek]

CLUTCH
In truth , there was nothing wrong with the clutch so this has been left alone. This was the only bit of the Coleby that didn’t need any work on this machine.

[ssorthiek]

ENGINE
The engine was in a poor state of repair. This is really where the restoration project investigation started. I knew that I needed a cowl for this engine to have any chance of getting this project finished. Clearly it was important to determine the type of engine it was and having not undertaken anything like this before had to start researching Colebys, types of engine used and so forth. So many photos were taken of the engine initially. Thankfully the engine did turn freely. When I took the engine head off, the cylinder did look really good, but a host of other issues presented themselves.

The fly wheel was very difficult to remove and I had to get some specialist assistance to help me with this.
The return spring housing for the governer was broken off and missing
The Piston rings were more than a little worn
The Magneto was not sparking and the impulse mechanism was just not doing what it should.
The carburettor was not doing what it should (the float was found to have a leak in it and the jets were also blocked.
The petrol tank had a hole in it.
I managed to strip the thread on the starter pulley wheel which subsequently needed further rework.

After much head scratching I managed to get the whole thing up together. Fortunately I had another, slightly later, Coleby working and some of the head scratching was alleviated by comparing a good engine with the one I was working on. I also managed to get a spare engine with a cowl and this helped with other spares. The initial run of the engine was completed without the clutch in place. Without the clutch the Coleby wouldn’t go anywhere and the Coleby served as a really good mounting frame.

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[ssorthiek]

PAINTWORK
The paintwork was not is a good state. One of the first jobs to get me going was to powder coat as much as I reasonably could. The gearbox was still assembled so this was not a candidate and so was the engine block. Not really understanding colours and the likes, having done a little research, I thought that RAL 6005 was probably a reasonable colour to choose and would be reasonably close to the original. This was apparently British Racing Green or Moss Green. The handlebars were powder coated along with engine cowl, and various other bits which meant my hands stayed relatively clean. The wheels were painted black and although I asked for satin, the painter painted them gloss. It doesn’t look to bad. I have recently bought colour charts and in now looks as if RAL 6001 (Leaf Green) would have been a better choice.

For interests sake, the paintwork does seem to coincide nicely with the date of the machine. Later models were Yellow, probably RAL 1023 with red wheels, probably RAL 3082, the picture of the yellow Coleby is my other machine and is for illustration.

Those of you that are observant may notice that I am wearing a polo shirt with a Coleby logo on it. This is part of the history of the Coleby machines. My father got this produced from an original letterhead, my father being the son of one of the owners (Sidney Ross) of Coleby Cultivators Ltd after Fred Coleby passed away in 1960.

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[ssorthiek]

FURTHER WORK

When I picked the Coleby up, it had been laying in my dad’s garden for many years in the hope that he would restore it. We couldn’t find one of the levers to engage the wheels so I made a couple based on the working Coleby I had. After nearly two years he decided to put up a shed in the same spot as where he stored to Coleby and finally dug up the missing control lever. So now I need to clean up the control levers up and put them back onto the machine.
I need to change the oil in the gearbox and the engine. They are both the wrong grade at the moment but this was intended to be to wash the gearbox and engine out a little before putting the right grade in. I suspect that the gearbox oil will wait until I give it a good run out since I won’t be working with this machine, just giving it run out now and again.
The more observant of you will notice the air filter hasn’t been painted, but this is a fairly quick job and probably best suited after Easter now. I’m not sure about painting in the depths of winter in damp conditions.
I just need to look at the timing on the engine. If I’m not careful, the engine sparks when trying to start it and there is not enough momentum to carry it over TDC pulling the pull cord in the opposite direction. Not good. Any advice would be helpful on this front but I’ll get the manual out in a bit.
The governor needs adjusting to run at a nice 2200 rpm should be fairly straight forward.
Finally start the restoration of a Coleby with a Villiers 25A engine (watch this space)

[ssorthiek]

One final thing, if you are interested in the history of Coleby Cultivators then I have written an article which was published in the Club Newsletter April 2019 Issue 122. There were a couple of responses in subsequent newsletters which add a little to this article. Mr. Terence Seago recalls fond memories of Max Sy at J. Garrett & Sons Ltd ( See August 2019 newsletter), but this was not Coleby Cultivators in Swanley. Max Sy was in fact Fred Coleby’s stepson. It was common for family members to serve apprenticeships in other similar companies in those days and then be employed in those companies before moving to the family business, which is what appears to have happened in this case.

[andyfrost]

Always good to see one of our more unusual machines , very nice job. Did yours have the original carb shroud , or was this only fitted to the later models.

Andy.

[ssorthiek]

Hi Andy

Thanks for the comment.

My Coleby didn’t have a shroud around the Carb. However some JAP engines did run on paraffin and I have noticed a couple of JAP 55 engines on EBay that had some arrangement around the exhaust and carb, presumably to thin the paraffin and make it flow a bit better. Coleby didn’t exclusively use JAP engines either, there were some with BSA engines (mainly Coleby Seniors and Shires) and the earlier ones had Villiers engines. JAP was acquired by Villiers by 1957 (all the shares were bought by them). I think Coleby and Villiers might have had a falling out since I can’t seem to find any reference to Villiers after 1948.

There was a Coleby for sale on EBay. The seller reckoned that it might have had a Douglas Engine, but I’m not sure that it was the right engine for the machine. He was asking quite a bit of money for it otherwise I would have probably got another Coleby in my collection by now.

[andyfrost]

I think you’ve misunderstood me , I’m talking about the shroud in your image No3 , it was merely a form of “carb cover” and had nothing to do with petrol parrafin. The one I sold awhile back had it fitted , but I would guess that it was one of those parts that were not always re-fitted and subsequently lost , as it served no real purpose.

Andy.

[ssorthiek]

Thanks Andy, I saw that in the photo and wondered what it was. I can’t think of any fixing holes on mine where this could have been fitted at all. My later machine doesn’t have it on either but I haven’t looked for fixing holes on that machine but I know this had a “new” engine fitted.

As you can see from the “before” photos, if the shroud was fitted originally then the chances are that it was removed and lost many moons back.

Again, thanks for your interest. It is very much appreciated.

[andyfrost]

Memory is very sketchy , as it’s quite a while back when I parted with mine. What I can tell you is one mount used the aux petrol intake(the one right next to the exhaust in image 19) which was threaded , to the rear from scant memory there was a fabricated bracket that combined the throttle cable guide.

Andy.

[ssorthiek]

Thanks Andy, that is most useful information.

Having thought about why this shroud is on there if we take the view Coleby wouldn’t have put one on there if it wasn’t needed, I would hazard a guess that when you are ploughing or in a wet field, one can assume that the wheels will churn up a huge amount of mud and this will probably get onto the throttle mechanism. The shroud would probably prevent the worst of this. What I am sure of is Fred Coleby would have done a really good job of designing these machine but would have made sure that the machine was as economic to produce as possible.

Keith

[charlie]

Keith, thanks for sharing the story of the restoration. Good to see another rare machine restored, excellent work.

[Author]

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