OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Other Walk-Behind Rotary Mowers Scott bonnar 35

Hi Everyone,
These are the first Progress Images of The first of 2 SB35s Im currently resotring.This model is a 35-201 series 3 "Magister"Chassis no 35060.This particular version Will be 99.5% accurate.Every nut and bolt is genuine,all replated,all alloy polished and close to accurate colouring.Engine has been rebuilt.All parts accurate and correct.The model 201 of this era came in 5 models and 3 chassis styles.Scott bonnars own 201 155cc 4.5 HP engine with recoil start and impulsae start.the Villiers 4 stroke with impulse start,Kirby lauson with Impulse start and the model 201 "Special"or council model.The cost as new was 63.0.0.


Ill post more Images in the coming weeks and some more information regarding the SB Rotary Mowers,Including the next 2 rotary mowers the Model 47 and 49:)

Well it's beautiful of course Mal, but is it supposed to be gold? And did its engine gleam like that when it was new? Looks like it belongs in an art gallery rather than a museum of science. Not that I can imagine a museum of science turning it down.

Thankyou for your comments :)Dont they have Mower museums???Ok Grumpy,My intention with this model was to be as close too 100% accurate so it could be a bench mark for your acrhives and future restorers/collectors alike.The information and Images Ive provided are for the benefit of other members who may want to collect this model.The model 35 with the SB 201 two stroke only came with Gold base and Metallic Green cowl and starter.With one exception.The council model was a mirror Reverse Green base and Gold cowl.As for the engine,unlike many engines from before this era is SMOOTH cast and DID shine from new,Albeit mine may be a slightly higher sheen.As for the other parts you see,Ie flywheel and cowl carby and the like have all been Chemically cleaned,they are back to the same way they came out as new.No Silver or clear laquer paint has been used on any alloy parts.So it is in my opinion that this is a close enough representation of how it would have appeared on the show room floor.

Beautiful Work Blue, I'm bloody excited about seeing these ones as they come along, and I know they will provide a valuable resource for the archives here.

A very unique mower, and an engine made by Scott Bonnar themselves!

I'm guessing you wont be testing out the old add and poring water all over these ones when they are up ad finished!

Thank you for that clarification Mal. I should have known you'd done your homework and had it right - and now all that explanatory detail is in our archives, along with your pictures.

Your most welcome Grumpy:)Hahahaha Ty that was a great sales pitch!.As far as I know these things were so touchy,they hated even getting their little wheels damp,even the dew on the grass would make them Sneeze.But seriously As Ive been told by a few the engines were strong and very reliable.It was all the fault of the electrics,the main part which was the basis for most of its radical claims.I guess its the same for cars.Nearly every car is good for 100,000 kms.Then the real test begins,and truthfully most of the so called Big Names and "Cars of the year" are the ones that fall to pieces.Guess when you have to come up against Victa you got to do everything you can to sell a mower:)On that note,I am still curious in my own mind,SB was quite a large runner.Eg in 1964 they had approximately 13 models/variants on the market as well as 6 state branches.Why do so many reel mowers of this period exist today and almost next to no rotary mowers?Did one keep the other afloat in order to be viable?Since the name SB was generally asociated with reel mowers,were their rotaries overlooked in favour of a very Strong,tried and true ICON such as VICTA?
Any Ideas most welcome:)

Hi Mal, Wow!! What can I say....just brilliant mate!
I can't say that I have ever seen one of these "in the flesh" so to speak, but looks a very strong machine (as do all things Scott Bonnar).
Information on the Scotty rotaries is pretty thin on the ground and this thread will do a lot to address that problem....great for the archives and future new members of the forum.
I, for one, can't wait to see it finished.
Mal!

I keep saying, English and water are incompatible concepts.

We probably each have an individual view on a lot of the factors in mower sales from the 1960s to say 2000. Until the 1970s the federal government pretty much made imports from anywhere but Britain impractical, so the bulk of the sales fell to local manufacturers, given the quality of British electricals. (Not that local electricals could match American ones, though.)

Victa had a pretty rough start, making lawnmowers in the 1950s that were so awful that the British ones were better. However they overcame that by the very early 1960s and were making crude but effective mowers that didn't require a lot of maintenance if you could keep the supply of spark plugs and fuel up to them (they used an inordinate amount of both). Other Australian brands had become invisible by 1970, at least to me, though by 1980 Scott Bonnar had become a respectable brand of over-priced but quite adequate reel mowers for private owners, ATCO having disappeared from the Australian market by then on account of outlandish prices and maintenance requirements.

What really changed between the mid-1970s and say about 1980 is that Briggs and Stratton engines became available and financially accessible, spelling the doom of the 2 stroke mower in this market. Victa tried to resist that process in order to protect their sales of their own 2 strokes, by pricing the Briggs models higher than the 2 strokes. That effectively created opportunities both for Rover and for imported mowers: Victa put itself in a position of being a 2 stroke specialist at a time when the market no longer wanted 2 strokes. Victa's stranglehold was broken by this piece of corporate ineptitude. That gave them a shrinking market share, right when the long drought decimated lawnmower sales for close to ten years. As a result Victa was unable to show decent financial performance as a company. They were by then owned by an investor company, which could not see any real upside to retaining ownership: Victa appeared to have no growth opportunities even if they waited until the drought was over. So, the Victa company was sold to Briggs, Briggs moved production other than final assembly to China, and the rest is history.

So far as Scott Bonnar is concerned, from the early 1960s until about 1980 it was very difficult to compete with Victa in rotary mowers, but the (admittedly small) reel mower market was wide open. I think SB didn't really try all that hard in the rotary segment, coming up with a product that was a sort of anti-Victa. Victa's mowers were as crude as a cast iron ingot, but about as tough and reliable as one. SB came up with something that looked better but didn't work better, and they did not have the distribution or brand name to get anywhere in the market. They also did not have Victa's volume which supported Victa's rapid model changes leading to their mowers becoming fashion statements, like new cars. I find it remarkable that SB would try to break into the rotary mower business by making their main feature an English ignition system. That is about as smart as making the main feature of a new brand of car, a broken spring in the driver's seat sticking up about 4".

Hi grumpy, Scott Bonnar was actively engaged also in the export market for many years. Here is some info for you;



Hope you find this of interest, mate.

Many thanks to willingworker (Grant) for supplying this information.

Thanks for getting that into the archives, Deejay, there is a lot of factual information in it that should be preserved. I notice they give no information on export volumes or values: I'm a bit cynical about the reason for that. However it is clear they were trying, and trying harder than was usual among Australian manufacturers in that period.

Hi grumpy, SB were also taking advantage of the Scott Bonnar dealer network....'Electrolux' even jumped on board in the early 70's....
A Scott Bonnar Flymo....now that would make a great coffee table!!

Many thanks to willingworker (Grant) for supplying this information.

Wow Guys this is great!keep it coming,most of my info is from 1957 to the late 60s Ive nothing after this period(Just need to get my damn scanner to work so I can post some of it).Love the Export info Deejay and Grant:)
I totally agree with your last paragraph Grumpy,This was my conclusion also.Predominatly it was just too hard to break into a market dominated by VICTA.Also,In my opinon only it was a mirror reverse for victas Reel mowers,The volume doesnt seem to be there,so while one stole the market for rotary,"Victa"SB held it for Reels"Does this seem to be an accurate assumption for this period?

Personally, I think there is a real mirror situation going on.

For Rotary's, the Big name was Victa, then Rover, and then a varied assortment of brands ranging in success from Masport to Mowfast.

While over in the world of "Real" mowers, you have SB up front and Atco quite big too, followed by a similar assortment of brands from Qualcast to Royal Enfield.

SB attempted to infiltrate the Rotary's with only a little success (More so later on toward the Brigs Powered 520's and 720's) and Victa Tried at the reels with the Imperial, and later the Turf-master (now a name used on Rotary)

There were others who tried to cross the Bridge, Atco has thrown out the odd rotary, and Austral Villiers hit both marks, and on the professional side, Toro, and I believe at one point Husqvarna have produced both.

Of course the best bridging seen of the rotary gap in my mind is Rover-Scott Bonnar, combined, you get a fair slice of both pies!

Very well said Ty, Rover-Scott Bonnar was for a time a great partnership; the proof of that being that Rover continued to produce the Rover 45 Reel Mower up until the recent Rover takeover by MTD when they finally dropped it from the line-up.

I think Scott Bonnar was doomed by the time Rover bought the firm, Ty. They made the 45 for too long: it was too expensive to buy and to maintain. I doubt there was a solution to the reel mower problem that would have worked, but the complexity and high wear rate of the SB45 certainly wasn't it. They seem to have been trying to make a greens mower for private buyers, and that was a piece of insanity. If they could have made their belt drive mower reliable, perhaps that could have kept them alive. Success in the private-buyer-reel-mower niche would have required something that was like a Victa rotary to maintain and like an SB45 to use. It would have had to be bulletproof, and not need maintenance beyond a new V belt now and then, and a reel regrind perhaps every 3 years or more. During that three years, the odd incident of running over a dog bone or abandoned bicycle pedal would have had to cause belt slip rather than significant reel damage. Chain drive just wasn't the answer.

I haven't paid enough attention to Rover to interpret what went wrong there. Rover's rotaries seem to have been functional but less exciting than the Victas - they avoided the 2 stroke pitfall but didn't do anything to make their 4 strokes successful (aside from making them work properly but look boring). I have a 1976 Victa-Briggs and a 1983 Rover-Briggs, and I've never bothered to use the Rover because it seems a boring prospect compared with the rather flasher-looking Victa. Nothing wrong with the Rover, it's quieter than the Victa and has 4 blades and a bigger catcher, but it completely lacks charisma. It's like a modern mower instead of a classic mower (or a Commodore instead of a vintage car).

These Images show the front axle and height adjust set up.Also a few Pics of various parts,Serviceable are filter,Correct logo,full ball races for the wheels and of course the Wipac "Magister" secondry coil.The lower image shows the sales brochure for the model 35/201:)

Rover have tried out 2-strokes here and there, but never in great amounts, and back in there earliest times the seemed to have been a little more interested in looking appealing (Personally i think the late 70's switch to red was not a good move)

I have seen early (and I mean quite early) Rovers running Simplex 2-stroke engines, and then a little later they were running the Villiers 2-strokes (Such as the 7F) but at the point that Briggs became a viable motor in Australia, they moved the whole lot across rapidly, and after that the only 2-stroke I know of was the early 90's 2-stroke XL, powered by Suzuki.

They also seem to be slow to adapt to me, going back pre-80's, they Held on to the old rotating height adjuster way to long (Victa abandoned that thing by 1960, but Rover kept there version into the Mid-60's to my knowledge) And by 1972 Victa had a self propelled that ran an internal clutch gearbox, internally driven wheels, and a covered and discreet belt that made it very reliable and safe, while even upto the late 70's Rover still had a belt running to a rod at the back, that lifted on and off the rear wheels, very exposed, primitive and dangerous.

Really, the only thing Rover had going for them was the 4-stroke market, due to their uptake of Briggs, for the 4-stroke customers, rover had better range and pricing, while Victa remained for a long time the brand for us 2-stroke Junkies!

Thanks to Victa's stronghold on the Australian Market for so long, then Rovers grasp of the four strokes, it was Very hard for others to come in, especially those making there own engines, Turner did alright in the 60's with there bases and Kirby motors, but there sales were mostly based on providing wheels for other companies engines.

Many brands experimented with various engine manufacturers, while turner was mostly Kirby, Scotty has used Villiers, Briggs, J.A.P and there own engines in my experience, Rover has used Kirby, Tecumseh, Villiers, Suzuki, Briggs and Simplex, Boundy Industries did there own thing, with there crank case magneto, but never really made it big, and now are as scarce as hen's teeth.

Heck, My rotoscythe is self propelled, all internally, with a rear catcher, and BUX 2-stroke engine, all in the late 50's, and before Victa, Rover or most others had popped a catcher up the back or even created crude self propelled models, however it is massive, heavy, and cant be folded!

All in all, I think Victa made their ground by being simple, light and robust, they stayed progressuve, without becoming over complicated or cumbersome, and remained user friendly, hence why so many of there machines are still running after 30+ years with minimal maintenance, they kept it simple and reliable when the competition was all over the shop, and thats how they got the name up, after that they had the market, until the 4-stroke became more accessible, and reliable, and recently much more popular.

Not to mention, the early 4-strokes in Australia did not really make the market happy, Kirby engines just didn't keep up with the reliability, and the early alternatives were far and few between, and many still quite crude.

Scotty seems to have gotten more rotary's out than some, the Scotty powered ones are rare, the Villiers ones, also rare, the JAP ones even rarer, but the Briggs powered Scotty's that came a little later are not so rare, that seems to be when they actually got a few out the door.

Nicely displayed, Mal. That Magister coil looks like something the PMG would have supplied in the 1940s, or a WW2 era earphone.

1. Is that just a turnbuckle function on the height adjuster? If it could be kept lubricated, say by having O ring seals at both ends of the turnbuckle, it might last for generations.

2. Can you give us a circuit diagram for the ignition system, and/or pictures of the magneto?

Oh wow, Wait till Jeffrey set's his eyes on that "Balck Box" from the Magister magneto, You might want to tie it down Blue, I think he may otherwise manage to pull it through the screen!!!

You clearly need to write a book Ty,Your knowledge for the post 60s era is Both incredible and diverse.
I Like this bit...Perfect Ty!
Thanks Grumpy...Your so right lols,Strap on a wire and you could be a radio operator for Bomber Command.Yes its similar to that of the Victa 18s 1 left and 1 right thread 7/16 unf from memory.And yes Thats a great idea,but unfortunalely wont work unless I lathe in a groove.wish you had of told me this idea before I plated the rods.lols
And yeah ill get a diagram for you no worries:)Its quite simple really.All it is is an additional coil pac connected in perfect series wire for wire.I think it was simply a marketing ploy really,because all they needed to do was just put in a larger coil,same size as a victa would have been perfect...BUT NOOOOOOOOOO they had to go and over engineer something simple.Lmao.The design of the coil/flywheel plate is very good and the points houisng is sealed,so I doubt any water would ever get in,unless it became a submarine.This is why I feel it was just a marketing ploy for sales.:)