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That is it. The full title is Sunbeam 3 litre 12-16. The car is from 1912 and the reg is from 1913. Full story of this car here.

 

https://www.i-bidder.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/cheffinson/catalogue-id-cheffi2-10012/lot-5ae8227f-dd2c-4ce4-bcf1-a7a000aa88bf

 

There is a New Zealand connection here which will interest members from NZ.

 

Photo of the restored car at a show in Dublin in July below.

 

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Your turn, Wilson

 

William

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I will find something tomorrow. My family story about a Sunbeam relates to my uncle. He wanted an upmarket sporting car to restore. There was a well known motoring museum in Scotland, whose name escapes me (began with S), that shut down in the early 1960's and all their very extensive and special stock was being sold at auction. My uncle had his eye on a 1925 Sunbeam Three Litre Twin Cam, ex Sammy Davis and Le Mans. My uncle was a life long invalid with a congenital heart problem, which he tended to trade on and he could very conveniently, become ill, when anything approaching work was in the offing but he was genuinely unwell at the time of the auction sale. He sent a friend to bid for him. When the friend told him what he had had to pay for the car, my uncle was delighted and could not believe he had got this very special car so cheaply. Sadly when it arrived, it turned out the friend (no longer!) had bid on the wrong car and bought an enormous "Maharajah" seven seat Sunbeam limousine, because he was sure that was much more my uncle's style than the scruffy looking sports car. 

 

Wilson

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John Cuthill Sword, a wealthy Scottish entrepreneur who had started his business life as van boy in his father’s bakery and built up a business empire that encompassed many diverse companies, including the Western Scottish Motor traction Company of Kilmarnock. He owned “hundreds of buses, aeroplanes (he started the air ambulance service from Renfrew to the Western Isles that has saved very many lives), a number of farms, two steam yachts, studs of hackneys and Arabian horses…”  After his death in 1960 at the age of 67, Sword’s collection at East Balgray in Ayrshire was auctioned off in two landmark sales.

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Now for something a bit different. 

 

Make, model and approx year please

 

Wilson

 

 

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Edited by wlaidlaw
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Advertisement (gone after registration)

Actually I am on the look out for one of the Porsche Super 4 cylinder diesel tractors but not prepared to pay silly money (not more than £10,000). Our David Brown 995 Classic Tractor has been pronounced irretrievably dead. We are waiting for the scrap yard to come and collect it. I reckon the Porsche tractors are a good investment. I should have bought one when I got the David Brown in 1992. I could have got one then for around £2000. 

 

Wilson

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Yes, the Porsche Tractor is so "cute" (from Porsche Museum, Stuttgart)

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That is the middle sized Porsche Tractor with three cylinders. I want the "daddy" with 4 cylinders and hydraulics, as I need a front end loader for handling big rolls of hay and straw for our animals. There is also a baby one with two cylinders. The one in my picture is not German. 

 

Wilson

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Dunk you have some of the letters correct but wrong make, wrong country. 

 

The man who arranged the purchase of my old David Brown in 1992 was a serious vintage tractor enthusiast with a number of the old orange David Browns and a 1920's John Deere. He used to occasionally work with my wife, when they were giving talks on seating and posture for large company offices. She told me he had an old tractor arriving from Germany and as I had had an old Austrian Sachs single cylinder two stroke diesel tractor, he would appreciate any help I could give him.

 

I arrived at his house to find he and a couple of friends had spent the entire morning trying to crank this Lanz Bulldog single cylinder diesel, with the twin hand starter wheels, with not a single cough. They had spent hours and a most of a cylinder of gas, heating the hot bulb to no avail. I asked what they were using for starter plugs and got a very blank look. I then produced out of my pocket a small tin (see photo below) of Zundfix starters left over from my Sachs. You unscrew a steel tapered plug in the cylinder head and insert this bit of cotton rope, about 1/4" in diameter and a bit over an inch long into the cylinder end of the plug and screw it back into the hot bulb of the cylinder head. The cotton is heavily impregnated with ammonium nitrate and phosphorous at its red tip and lightly impregnated with ammonium nitrate for the rest of the rope. Nobody had told them about these. A quick prime with the hand injector pump and one flick on on the starter wheel and away it went. The red tip of the cotton rope is fired by the compression and after the tip has ignited the rest smoulders and acts like a glow plug for a minute or so until combustion is self sustaining.

 

Old Field Marshall tractors, like the one I learnt to drive on, also used to use these ignitors to start, plus a 10 bore shotgun cartridge with no pellets in it, to work the Coffman starter. The farmer always used to object to anyone using a cartridge rather than the crank to start, because the cartridges were one shilling each. 

 

Wilson

 

 

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