OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Victa Walk-Behind Rotary Mowers Automatic

how can you tell an automatic from a standard victa 18 ?

This may be a bit of an older post, but incase sonome is researching, and comes to this, here is the answer (to my knowledge anyway)

The Victa Automatic was a bit of an odd one, you could call it the first time Victa tried to make a 'Goverened' engine.

Rather than a link to the crankshagt, or a wind vane, the automatic had a flap hannging off the front and rear of the mower, these were linked to the carburettor, instead of a throttle controller, and they would controll the speed of the emgine, based on the height of the grass.

I remember seeing ads for them after interval in drive-in movies back in those days, Ty. They were a transparently stupid idea at the time - Briggs and Stratton engines came with air vane governors since WW2, so the patent had run out by then and there was no reason Victa couldn't have had a sensible governor at much lower cost. Kind of a preview of the ludicrousness of the carburetor they later adopted.

I wonder why they took so long to get to the air-vane idea, i like the G3 carby (there second, and last vane carby) but with others doing it that way for so long, and with mechanical govenors also aroung, i wonder why they took so long to get around to it (must have been 68 or 69 the G2 came out)

The automatic makes a beautiful collectors peice due to its rarity, but I am guessing that rarity comes down to it's popularity, or therfore lack of!

It's not that they are not popular it's just that they are so rare to get the parts for.If you did find these parts they come at a ridiculous cost.



Like for example these flaps here sold earlier this year for $2500.If you could find a complete mower you would easily pay $6500.When you look at the fact the Model 4 which included the Automatic was only about 10,000 mowers.So therefore even less Automatics.So they are highly collectable but come at a price.I have been lucky to find one,not at those prices,but it only has the rear flap.Now I don't ever see myself ever making it a complete Automatic mower due to the rareness of them.I also don't have that kind of money to be ever able to afford to get the front flap and side guards,but you never know maybe I can be lucky again.