OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums Restoring, Customising and Modifying Victa Walk-Behind Rotary Mowers Victa Four Stroke?

Does anyone know if Victa considered developing their own four stroker?
Also, did they ever explore making their own small capacity two stroke to power line trimmers. chainsaws, leaf blowers, etc?

No to both, as far as I know.

If they ever looked at their own four-stroke, it would have to have been before the early 1970's.

But that's a very different level of manufacturing technology to their full-crank 2-stroke engines, which were what they then made.

The Whitlam Government took the razor to the import tariff barriers that protected local small engine manufacture [among other local manufacturing] in 1973, and the local 4-stroke small engine manufacturing plants [who mostly made overseas designs under licence; e.g. James N. Kirby & Co with Lauson/Tecumseh, and Norton Villiers Australia with Villiers] did not survive long afterwards. With them went their two-stroke products, and at least one two-stroke only manufacturer went too - Pope comes to mind there.

Victa was soon the only remaining local mower engine manufacturer, until the 1990's era, when they became an assembler of mainly Chinese-made contracted out parts.

Line trimmers only really came on to the Oz market in the early 70's, and the Japanese makers then had high quality products that would have been very hard to compete with, especially with tariff protection gone.

Victa's smallest capacity engine in that era was the 85cc Compact/Lightweight one. The core engine is reliably rumoured to have been made by Bombardier in Canada for Victa, along with the 170cc Twin engine.

Gadge, I remember where I was that day when it was announced that tariffs were to be dropped, and I could only think that that was going to be the end of manufacturing in Aus and that is exactly what has happened, even though it has taken longer than I though it would

G'day Norm,
A great deal of Oz manufacturing went down the tube by the end of the 70's, after those tariff cuts.

There were 'corporate raiders' in plenty around at that time too, lying in wait for asset-rich public companies' share prices to drop to the point where a company's 'market capitalisation' [i.e. the total value of all of their issued shares] was well below the value of the assets. Then they'd buy up a controlling interest, shut down the company's operations, and 'asset-strip' the carcass. The demise of Mobilco Ltd, as part of the breakup of the diversified Pizzey Ltd Group, is the example most familiar to me.

It's difficult for those who weren't there at the time, to appreciate just how self-sufficient we were, even in a lot of 'niche market' items, up to then.

Of course there was quite a lot of 'import CKD [essentially parts kits], paint and assemble' done here before 1973, too. Those operations pretty much ceased, as soon as the equivalent complete machines could be landed here.

The AUD currency exchange rate against the USD and JPY was high at that time, which was an added factor in encouraging imports in the OPE sector.

Anyway, to 'get back to our muttons' , Victa was quite happy to sell nearly all two-stroke engines on their rotary push mowers, back then. IIRC their sole 4-stroke offering through much of the 70's was the Briggs-engined Impala 4 model.