Hi Sven,
I pretty much stand by my appraisal of this machine and that is that it's a late 1975 ~ 1976 machine but with an engine change at some stage in it's life.
The date of the engine correlates to the 9th of October 1973 and at that point in the Model 45's lifespan Scott Bonnar was using the Kirby Lauson engine across the full range. The other interesting point is that the fitted Briggs seems to be a 2.5 Hp powerplant which was the engine fitted to the 17 inch machines while the 14 inch machine used the 2 Hp variant and also in earlier times during the Series 1 45 they used the silver finished 60000 series 2.25 Hp as well as it was whatever SB could buy at the cheapest figure direct from Briggs at any given point in time.
I can't clearly see the sticker that's fitted to the front of the engine which has the Scott Bonnar name along with the machine size on it. This would be interesting to clarify if it says 14 or 17 inch on the remnants of it. Maybe if you so kindly could Sven, can you supply a close up photo of that sticker.
With the code you've given this can't be an original marriage of the two components and as such we can never absolutely clearly identify the build date of the said mower. Can I ask that you can supply us with a clear photo of the actual engine code in question
In saying all of the above this doesn't distract from what is a great mower. One thing to take into account and that is most machines of this age have had an engine swap at some stage of their working lives.
Cheers,
BB.
