OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Repairs and Maintenance Questions on Engines Questions on Other Engines ARCHIVE: Hurricane Engine - What Is It?

this was also picked up on my trip, it is part of an engine i dont recognise, marked Hurricane on the case, and Wilco on the top.

Anyone know what this is, I have no idea what it has come from.

Dont take my word for it but Iam pretty sure wico is the crand of the magneto, I am not sure what this engine may have been used on though....

I am also used to Wico being a brand found on magnetos until about the 1950s. It turns out to be an American brand:
http://www.magnetoparts.com/wico_rot.htm

I don't recall a Hurricane engine of that type. Because it has an American magneto there is a good chance it is an American engine - otherwise it would more likely have had a British magneto of extreme appallingness. In the old days Australia obstructed imports from everywhere except Britain even more than it obstructed them from Britain (preferential import duties) so local manufacturers used a lot of British stuff. Hence huge amounts of atrocious Lucas componentry were used here, and almost equally bad British cars dominated our roads. (The vintage car fraternity refer to Joseph Lucas as "the prince of darkness", due to the typical reliability of his lighting systems).

Wico Pacy or Wipac, are from England and made magnetos plus other car electrical stuff.

http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Wipac

Still trying to find where and when Hurricane started makeing motors. I think they are Aussie made. They were used on mowers, like the Amplion mowers.

Wipac was an English company with some kind of relationship with Wico, probably initially a licensing agreement. The magneto on the Hurricane in the picture was made by Wico Electric Company. Here is a blow-up of the center of Ty's pic:


The part number is Y12182, which is a Wico part number. I can't read most of the words on the pic - Ty, you should be ashamed, not one of your usual prize-winning pics - but it seems like a Massachusetts product from the company name and the part number, plus I think I see "MASS." in the third line of text (can't read the name of the town though - WICO was originally in West Springfield, MASS).

Slightly off-topic, you can buy Wico's original certificate of incorporation, back when it was called Witherbee Igniter Co, if you want to (and read the company history at the same time):
http://www.scripophily.net/witigco.html

Hi All, here is some further info on the Hurricane engine.
Click HERE
Hoping this is of help.

Thanks for the information guys, This one will probably have to be in storage for some time, untill i can source the correct parts for it, which will not be easy considering how much is missing, but I'm willing to let this one patiently sit in a safe place.

I will make a note of what is written on top, and maybe even chuck in a more award worth photo! :P

Deejay, if I am reading it correctly that seems to be telling me that my old 5 hp Waterboy outboard had a Hurricane engine. Midway through its life my father replaced the air cooled cylinder with a water cooled one. Up to now I always thought it was made by Atom, but it seems I was wrong.

Isn't this the great thing about this forum, we never stop learning new things and sometimes questioning what we read till we find the right answer.

Thats for sure.

As this came from the same skip as my recently aquired 'Unwanted collection' I Imagine the last owner might help shaed some light, I will see what i can get back from that line of inquery.

Maybe i can get some pictures of what it was on!

Mr Davis,
There is a pic of this motor on the front cover of an instruction book on a Hurricane model I am sending you. Hope it helps.
Hurricane Mfg Co Pty Ltd, 781 Princes Hwy, Sylvania . or 44 Crammond Bvde, Caringbah.
Disregard all that - Deejay has it all in his post . Thats what I get for not reading ALL the posts properly
Stationary

Thankyou stationary, I'm getting very exited about this disc!!!

Here's a better picture:

and the serial:

Thanks Ty, a proper American one, so it has some hope of working properly. I don't know what "serial" means but because it is stamped in, I take it that is the serial number of the magneto. It isn't the part number, that was the Y12182 number that is part of the flywheel casting, not stamped on.

Ahhhhh, I knew I had read that somewhere. Thanks for posting the link Deejay.

Ahhhhh, copy that. You learn something new every day. Victa had the Pommy magnetos on them.

MVC, because of the "British preference" in the old tariff system, coupled with the embedded status of a lot of British companies in Australia, up until the economic reforms that happened from the 1980s onward, we got a lot of British merchandise here, regardless of quality and cost-competitiveness. We still have a lot of the embedded companies, but the tariff system is largely gone, so these days our major trading partners are China, the US, Japan, Singapore, and then the UK. If it weren't for the embedded companies, I believe the UK would currently be lower still in the rankings.

Obviously British goods are getting better, and the US is phasing out on-shore manufacture of most things, so the situation is quite different from the 1950s, but back in those days, things branded Wipac or Lucas were not necessarily the world's finest examples of their kind. To be fair, Lucas was a stand-out example, while Wipac was just one among many. And 1950s US goods weren't necessarily marvellous either. Everyone had a lot to learn about quality in those days.

Hi grumpy, Ahhhh...the memories...Lucas, "the Prince of Darkness"

I sould clarify, the 'Serial' i have photographed above is the number stamped on the cranc case, not the flywheel.

I'm hoping i might get some usefull info back from the guy who used to own this one, maybe even some photo's, but i dont know how that will go yet.

Deejay, I recall in the 1990s, the head man of Jaguar US (which was purely a marketing operation) was interviewed in the trade press. He was asked to comment on US buyers of Jaguars. He said, "It's a pleasure to deal with people with such low expectations. They think it's a miracle if the car starts on a wet day." Having had a few cars with Lucas distributors, I know what he meant. On wet days, road splashes on the outside of the distributor were enough to get water inside it, and stop the car. Plus the badly plated steel clips for the fuses usually corroded after a while, and the fuses then only made intermittent contact, so when the lights went out, you had to find the fuse block in the dark and pull the fuses in and out a few times to scrape off some of the corrosion. In those days we were all so used to Lucas electrics that we regarded that as almost normal.

In the early 1970s I put a 215 cubic inch Buick aluminium V8 in an MGB, using the original Delco electrics of course. Driving it home from work one night I carelessly ran into a foot or so of water covering the road for 100 yards or so, at 40 mph. The bow wave rode up over the downsloping hood of the MGB, effectively submerging the car. I got thoroughly wet from water forcing its way between the windscreen header and the roof. All I did was declutch, wait for the car to stop, engage first gear, and drive the rest of the way to (relatively) unflooded roadway at the end of the flooded stretch. Everything continued to run perfectly, of course. No doubt the air cleaner element was dampish, but it wasn't noticeable, and it must have dried itself out before I got to the freeway, because all was well. I would have been a lot less happy attempting the same thing with the car's original BMC B engine, complete with Lucas electrics. It would have been a long wade, and I'd have needed a diesel tow truck or a very long tow rope.