OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Collectors Corner Identification of Particular Machines My Princess

I have this Rover Princess that I bought recently to tidy up and sell. (as I do for a living).
Although I don't intend to restore it like you chaps do, I intended to get a little bit close to the colours so that it doesn't look ridiculous. So my questions are:
1)anyone got a photo of it in original condition?
2)anyone know if the parts I have photo'd are from different engines? because the head is yellowy. the carb like a blackish/green, and the starter like a whitish olive? The top cover is white? or even a bit olive/green . WELL I DONT KNOW! I AM COLOUR BLIND!
Help a mate out here will ya?

It looks to me as if the engine is a bitsa. Briggs has made them in silver, white, black and orange, with many of the parts being interchangeable between them. (The colours generally tended to succeed one another over time, so you can often estimate the age of the engine from its colour. If it is a single complete engine rather than a bitsa like yours, you can get the actual date of manufacture from information stamped on the engine.) I don't recall them ever being made in yellow, but sometimes mower manufacturers or repairers spray over everything in sight, especially the engine, with some bright colour.

I suggest you choose a single colour for the whole engine. Silver ran up to about 1970, then white until about 1980, then black and orange seemed to run simultaneously. Your mower looks to be from some time in the 1970s to me, which means it might originally have had a white vertical pull Briggs, looking like your cooling cowl and starter. However the current engine may not contain any original parts - as I keep saying, it is a bitsa.

Hi Grumpy,

One of our members Chris 125 has had a couple of yellow Briggs...Here's one on a Rover he restored...

And one he is restoring in as found condition,

Thanks Grumpy

Thanks Deejay. I notice those engines seem to be very late vertical-pull types, which I think means mid 1980s. Since both black and orange were running at that time, my guess would be that Briggs was allowing mower manufacturers to specify colour as an option when ordering batches of engines. This means it would have been controlled by the Type and Trim section of the engine specification. Hence there might have been more than 3 colours by then (black, orange, yellow, and maybe others). However that is a guess at the moment. Members with rainbow coloured original engines might be able to help us clarify what actually went on.