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Hi all, a bit of a long one but it may be of interest to some of you!
I’ve been slowly amassing various Merry Tillers and implements over the past year. I’m trying with the help of various brochures to get an example of every machine and every implement. I have about 1/3 of the machines covered but at the moment I’m more interested in the implements, and by my research have about 80% of them.
The latest attachment I thought you might be interested in is an air compressor. Supplied by Batemans of Garstang this was originally fitted to the rear of the machine under the handles according to the early brochures. Later the compressor was mounted out the front. It’s this later setup that I’ve gone with.
I had been keeping an eye out for various attachments when a water pump came up on that well known auction site. It cost a little more than I wanted but when it arrived I was happy with it, and even better the mounting bracket had more holes then required which suggested to me that this bracket was also used with other front mounted attachments. Now I had a bracket to mount to the hunt was on for a Bateman compressor.
I managed to source an electric Bateman compressor set again on that well known site. Tired and from a house clearance I managed to acquire it for a song. The unit did run but was missing an air filter and was making some worrying banging sounds. The compressor followed me to work and over the period of a month of lunchtimes was cleaned up, had all the bearings, seals and gaskets replaced, had an air filter sourced and finally had a special washer made up because the pulley wasn’t actually being held on by anything. I then rebuilt the original electric Bateman set to see if the compressor now worked. It performed well and other than a small leak from one of the bungs used to access the valves which I fixed with a dowty washer there were no further problems.
I then robbed the bracket off the water pump and fitted the compressor to it. It fitted straight on and even better the belt from the electric compressor set fitted. The only problem is that the holes in the bracket are slotted to set the belt tension and I didn’t want to have to swap between the water pump and the compressor every time I wanted to use one so I made a reproduction bracket. Not quite the same as the original. The mounting plate is thicker as that was available to me in the scrap at work and unfortunately 3mm wall 35mm box is not readily available so I had to make do with 2mm. If it proves to be a problem I’ll have to possibly make some 3mm up. I also made the bracket longer so that there was a mounting for the water separator. Originally this wasn’t supplied with the Merry Tiller sets judging by the brochures but the electric compressor set had one and it seemed sensible to use it as it was there. I’ve attached some photos of the finished contraption. It needs a foot attaching to it and painting but I’m very pleased with the result!
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