Michael Pedersen's Buzzacott

This is my old Buzacott engine. It's serial number is 12069, it runs well and hardly uses any petrol. Bloody loud, smokey and wild but. No joke when it's pulling a load flame is EXPECTED to come shooting out the straight 1/2 inch pipe on the right hand side of the cylinder.

From memory, it has 23 fins arranged vertically around the cylinder for cooling. At the back is a lucas magneto driven directly off the crankshaft by a 1:1 ratio gear system. On the right hand side is a flap held in place by a wing nut which is easilly pulled off to service the big end of the con-rod. The cylinder is lubricated by a 'piston lubricator' (Editor:- "oiler") which is a round brass container with glass windows that allows 6 drops of motor oil per minute to run down into the cylinder. Everything else is lubricated by grease, which is supplied to the bearings in little cups with lids that are screwed down manually every few hours to inject more grease. The crank shaft has a cup with a left-handed thread on it's tail end, and, as the engine runs the inertia of the spinning crank slowly tightens the pot's lid, therefore supplying grease to the big end.

While it's a 4 stroke, this Buzacott has a port (like a 2 stroke) on the lower section of the cylinder (where the piston is when near bottom dead center). The idea of the port is: When the piston is blasted down on the power stroke and hits bottom dead center, some of the pressure from the (still burning) exhaust can escape out the port before the exhaust valve on top opens, reducing back pressure considerably and lowering the stress on the engine.

Ok now you might be scratching you head over that lonely rocker and wondering "Where is the other one???". Good question, there never was another one. The intake valve has no rocker, just a very weak valve return spring. The exhaust valve on the other hand does have a rocker and a heavy valve spring. When the piston drops on the intake stroke a vacuum is created, and it sucks the intake valve open due to it's very light spring!! When the engine is running you can hear this weird 'slurp' noise just before the engine goes 'bang' (that's the valve getting sucked open!!) [Editor:- This engine is a hit 'n miss].

Now the 'carby' is interesting, air is sucked in through a tiny hole with no air filter. The 'needle' is actually a tap you turn arround to start and stop the engine. Once it kicks over you have to turn the tap in and 'lean' it out untill it sounds right. One turn more in switches the engine off. The choke flap is another piece of simplicity, - about the size of an Australian 10c [Editor:- 1 inch] coin loaded with a sping to hold it off. All you have to do is hold the choke lever down with your thumb to start, and, when the motor fires, you let the lever go and the choke springs off. So basically on the 'control pannel' this old motor has two 'high-tech' settings : ON and OFF.

One last thing - the govenor. I'm working on getting a photo of the inside of the flywheel to show it off, but for now I will just explain it. This engine has what is known as 'hit and miss' governing. The governor is a swinging lever with a spring attatched to the inside of the fly wheel. When the engine fires, the spring is stretched by the sudden 'jerk' caused by the power stroke, and the govenor swings out. About this time the cam lifts the push rod up for the exauste valve to open, and the govenor, (now swung out fully) crashes into yet another spring-loaded lever, which, in turn is thrust under the push rod, the instant the cam drops it. Now this locks the pushrod up and the engine just spins freely - sucking and blowing though the open exauste valve. As the engine spins in 'neutral' it slows down slightly and the spring on the govenor pulls it back in. The camshaft by now has done a full revolution, and, while the push rod is now locked in the 'up' position by a lever, the cam is still capable of lifting it another 3 or 4 mm, which it does. As the push rod goes up the lever that's locking it in is forced out under spring pressure. The pushrod now drops and lets the exhaust valve shut. The engine (finally) fires again. See what I mean "hit and miss governing"??

This engine is more like some kind of wild animal than a quaint 3 hp engine the old time adds for it made it out to be, but they are great to muck arround with. This was the first engine I put together (I got it in little pieces), and I learnt a lot from it. While I have moved onto more complicated things like a Fiat diesel tractor, a Ford Cleverland 351V8, a Ford F100 6 cylinder ute, a few Sthil chainsaws and numerous other engines small and large, I still like our 3 Buzacott's and would not sell them for anything.

Editor: Some readers may have seen a similar engine before under the name Rosebery or Southern Cross. These are all the same engine. They were produced by Southern Cross and Rosebery and marketed as other brands. They were usually connected to a jack pump (a pump which either replaced a windmill or supplemented one when there was no wind).