Victa Mowers (It's Summer Down Under!)

[bertsmobile1]

Thank you so much for all of the pictures and explanations!
I sometimes wonder if you ever worked for Victa. You know so much about them!
Each mower that they made was so unique in every way! Not one ressembles a "normal mower".

No never worked at Victa, but know a lot of people who did and did some work for them.
Worked wekends all my life from about 12.
Got into metals due to working in a spinning shop that made Oyster type light fittings
Always wanted to be a mechanic now (at 60 + ) I finally am one.
Did Metalurgy at Uni
Ended up in tertiary metallurgy ( recycling )
Then transport for 30 years
Now Small engines
Been playing with BSA motorcycles for 45 years.

In Australia, lawn mowers are Victa. they had better the 75% of the market if you include all of the "competitors" mowers that were made by them and all the store brand mowers that were made by them.
So any one who fixed mowers down here knows a lot about and has worked on a lot of Victas.
BSA made 2,000,000 Bantam motorcycles over 15 years and every one in an old "empire" country over 40 started riding on a Bantam ( Broncs & Red flashes in the states )
Victa is some where around 10,000,000 lawn mowers.

Because they are so simple and require so little maintenance very few bother to do any maintenance at all, so eventually they take more time starting the mower than they do mowing with it.
Because there is so little profit for a shop to sell 2nd hand mowers , most shops will not trade in your old mower so they end up being put out for road side clean up.
I was one of hundreds who used to pick them up, fix them up & flog them off at good ( tax free ) profit if you don't cost out your time at the going rate.
Currently there are about 60 mowers in the graveyard awaiting potential repair.
Victa use the same PVC tube for the fuel & all vacuum lines ( simplicity again ) . This goes hard over time and should be replaced every 5 years or so ( $ 2.00 ).
If you don't, it starts to leak so the governor dosen't quite work right so it speeds up and the decompressor dosen't close tight enough so carbon builds up around the decompression piston and you bleed off combustion mixture through the decompressor, the engine runs even faster and looses power, A lot of oil builds up around the decompressor which is instantly assumed to be a blown head gasket so off Mr & Mrs Idiot go tromping to the discount department store to buy a "good" mower.
We have an amazing cultural cringe down here and consider every thing made locally to be absolute trash.
The other achillies heal is the "O" ring seal between the manifold and crankcase which also goes hard and sucks air causing lean running. Despite it being a dead easy ( two screw ) maintenance job ( every 10 years ) again it gets overlooked and owners can not get "this bastard piece of crap" to work so again it is off to the department store for a "better" mower.

The 5 year maintenance consists of replacing all the air/ fuel lines , cleaning the decompressor valve , replacing the fuel tap filter , air filter & starter cord. Takes about 1/2 hour & costs about $ 30 retail for parts
The 10 year maintenance consists of replacing 5 "O" rings ,the govenor diaphram + the 5 year list . Sometimes you need to shim the carb cam and if it was used for long mowing runs replace the long govenor spring. About 1-2 hrs + $ 40 parts
15 years as per 5 year
20 years, as per 10 year + rings ( piston if neessary ) + lower oil seal ( bearings if necessary ) might get to $ 60

Blades are $ 10 to $ 30 and should be replaced annually , as with every walk behind mower .

 

[Two-Stroke]

Re: Victa Mowers (It's Summer Down Under!) The Quiet Series

One of the big complaints about 2 strokes ( which you won't find on this site ) is the noise.
Victa spent millions researching where the noise is comming from and then doing something about it.
The solution was to make the discharge chute a lot taller & thinner as seen in the last photo.

They then made a full cowl which bolted tight to those holes to enclose the noise.
This is the old VC motor in a Mustang which was Victa's top model at that time.
This one had chrome plated double fold handles , ball bearing wheels and the "magic eye" catcher that clipped onto rear flap to prevent noise loss.
The result was very quiet, for a blue smoke just slightly louder than the current 4 stroke alternative at the time.
the green catcher is wrong, it should have been either white or black. And they have been playing silly buggers with the throttle cable. from about 1976

View attachment 24554

I pinched this of evilbay
This is the Mustang resplendant in green with the correct green catcher still the VC series engine about 1979 with a Utility next door fitted with the Mk I Power Torque.
The Utilitys were always side discharge with no catcher. Note the squat muffler on the Utility and the long muffler on the Mustang.

View attachment 24555

The Vortex was the next big leap. Victa had finally cracked it by finding out the remaining noise was coming from the blades and air pumping.
The mower was inaudiable from about 30 ft away. The tooled up for a massive production run. It was the top of the line and amazing.
Unfortunately the buracrats who all live in units and would be hard pressed to work out how to take a lawn mower out of its box let alone actually use one decided it was a safety risk so despite very strong demand it was quitely withdrawn from the market & Victa was broke.
All these Vortex were red and have a unique blade plate & blades. They regularly go for $ 1000 + despite being illegal to use or import into half the world ( USA included ).
Victa salvaged what they could with the second generation Vortex , The yellow one in the photo below.
It had a modified std blade plate with a rubber skirt around the outside. While being a lot noisier than the red Vortex it was the quietest mower on the market in its day and is still the quietist push mower money can buy.
However the pencil d..ks were not satisfied and decided it had to be fitted with some "visual running indicator" to be allowed into the USA .( Bet a lot of Senators dinned out on that one for a long while ).
So it got rebadged as the Mustang which had a strong market in The UK & Europe

View attachment 24556

The Yellow Vortx 1984 & white Mustang 1986 mowers above are identical to the cheaper Charger model shown below except for the extra plastic. & skirt around the blade disc.
note the holes in the base near the wheels and in front of the catcher for the big cowl .
Despite the constricted shape this mower will still cut 6" of wet grass and manage to toss it all into the catcher .
This Magic Eye catcher is a little blind, having losts it's eye and was the biggest solid catcher available at the time.
Because it clips to the outside of the discharge chute cover it is a bit fiddly to fit.
Despite being 30 years old I still get $ 200-$ 300 for a good one with serviceable catcher

ATTACH=CONFIG]24553[/ATTACH]

Wow... so many things to comment on.

Noise Supression: it's good that Victa made that a priority because the user shouldn't have to wear ear plugs to mow a lawn. Lawn-Boy did some great design work in the 1970s making a very quiet, two-cycle mower. The main point: larger muffler, located under the deck. And I don't agree that two-strokes are noisier than four-cycle engines -- unless you use a tiny muffler on the two-stroke (which will also sap power).

But about the first generation Victa Vortex -- What caused it to be banned? Why was it less safe than any other push mower? It's neat that they're in high demand now.

And how is the second generation Vortex different from the first? I don't understand what a "visual running indicator" is -- was it so quiet that regulators were afraid someone wouldn't know the blade was spinning?

Thanks for all the photos and explaination. :thumbsup:

 

[Two-Stroke]

Not quite,
the shaft going to the boxes front & back is the height adjuster not a drive shaft.
This model had invinately variable height adjustment to around 4 "

Standard for this model was a wire rope recoil start that was no end of trouble, it bolted into the 4 holes on top of the cowl and followed the shape of the slightly raised lip you can see.
This starter is very rare now days and oft brings near $ 1000 as in the period most were tossed away or sold as scrap as they were aluminium.

Victa started the under deck exhaust with the model you are looking at around 1958 / 59.
It was a feature on the deluxe models, fitted with their own engine.
It was a mish mash for a while with most alloy decks having under deck exhausts and most steel decks had pointing foreword exhausts. They made both types concurrently.
When they went to east-west orientation of the engine just about all were under deck except the 4 strokes which is the current practice.

That particular shade of green hammer tone paint wa exclusive to Victa and he has done really well to reproduce it as it is not made any more and hammer finish is really hard to colour match

I should have figured out that the height adjuster wasn't a drive mechanism -- there is no control to engage and disengage the drive. :confused2:

Wow... $1000 for that starter part? Some collectors are so hard core. I love my old mowers but that's insane.

 

[bertsmobile1]

When you mentioned "slashers" I didn't know what you meant until I saw the photos. In the United States that type of machine is called a field mower or a rough-cut mower.

It's interesting that the Victa slashers use a blade plate and swing back blades. I can see advantages to that approach -- when you hit something really solid the blade can just give way so there's no huge impact.

I have a mower like that (Honda-powered, "Billy Goat" brand, belt-driven, fixed blade) and it's a beast -- very heavy but it will go through about anything. I wish someone would build a field mower (or slasher) that's much, much lighter than what i have.

Thanks for the pictures.

What was that quote," two countries seperated by a common language"
When I am running through grass that is 10" to 2 foot and paticularly when it s getting run into or out of the trailer, yes, I would like it to be lighter.
Then you hit something it can't cut through and undestand why it is so heavy, Even then it has tossed my 200 lbs flat on my butt on more than 1 occasion .
The same mower was supplied with a 160cc or 200cc Honda and possibly a Briggs or Tecumseh although I have never seen one.
The mounting plate is different for the 4 strokes and I have seen quite a few with a 4 stroke plate modified to take a 2 stroke.

The blade plate acts as a momentum store and it really rips through the rough.
They are nearly impossible to start without the plate in place as there is no clutch, the one modification I am looking at doing, particularly to the old ( orange ) ones.
To reduce drag you usually start them with the blades set to full height, because of the position of the pull rope on the VC series engines it is really easy to end up with your foot well & truly in the chop off zone and mine would make short work of a pair of steel caps if it fired up with your foot under it.

My aftermarket wholesalers list Billy Goat parts so there must be a reasonable amount down here but I am yet to see one in the flesh.
Finding out how to fix things I have never seen before is exactly why I joined this forum in the first place.
With the high $ Aus the past few years a lot of USA stuff has been imported with no post sales support.

 

[bertsmobile1]

I should have figured out that the height adjuster wasn't a drive mechanism -- there is no control to engage and disengage the drive. :confused2:

Wow... $1000 for that starter part? Some collectors are so hard core. I love my old mowers but that's insane.

Well I shouldn't have to tell any one on this site just how obsessive some collectors can be.
So long as it floats their boat & dosn't sink others, good luck to them. I find beer a tad more important to my life than the correct starter.
there was a story that one exhibitor got marked down at a concorse because he had the wrong number of braids in the wire in his pull start
Correct diameter wire, just the wrong number of strands.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Re: Victa Mowers (It's Summer Down Under!) The Quiet Series

Wow... so many things to comment on.

Noise Supression: it's good that Victa made that a priority because the user shouldn't have to wear ear plugs to mow a lawn. Lawn-Boy did some great design work in the 1970s making a very quiet, two-cycle mower. The main point: larger muffler, located under the deck. And I don't agree that two-strokes are noisier than four-cycle engines -- unless you use a tiny muffler on the two-stroke (which will also sap power).

But about the first generation Victa Vortex -- What caused it to be banned? Why was it less safe than any other push mower? It's neat that they're in high demand now.

And how is the second generation Vortex different from the first? I don't understand what a "visual running indicator" is -- was it so quiet that regulators were afraid someone wouldn't know the blade was spinning?

Thanks for all the photos and explaination. :thumbsup:

To reduce exhaust noise you only need to do two things,
Slow it down
Cool it

Disperseing it by running the exhaust under the base plate does not reduce the total amount of noise but because it is coming from every where at any one place there will be less noise passing.
We made resonators to fit the old VC 125 in my teens, doubled the power but hell it was noisy.
The idea of the under deck exhaust was not to benefit the user it was to benifit the neighbours.

Vortex were very quiet, with a good muffler a little less than an electric mower so obviously every passer by will go and stick their hands underneath to see if it is running won't they ?
Don't you do it every time you pass a more you can not hear ?
Now there is nothing short of a bullet between the ears that will stop buracrats from protecting the population from their own fantaseys regardless of how absurd they are.
And without trying to be political could you imaging the effect of a "quiet mower" available to the suburban home owner would have on all the US mower makers and engine makers ?
The "there must be silence in the suburbs" lobbyist would be hell bent on passing reduced noise laws that no US maker could meet.

For a long time electric mowers were required to have a little bubble on the top with a red & white spinner inside so you would know they were running and that is even after dead mans switches became mandatory .

The red vortex has a very short blade. The blade plate has little curved fan blades pressed into it pointing up and slots pointing to the ground.
So what happens is the air is drawn past the blades and then travels over the top of the blade plate then is directed back down onto the grass, passes along the grass the is sucked back up past the blades again so most of it just swirls around under the base plate .
Sound has to be carried by a medium, it will not pass through a vacuum and at ground level it is transmitted by the air.
If this air is effectively trapped below the mower, you never get to hear the sound it is carrying and it gets converted into heat or is adsorbed by the blades of grass bending to & fro.
The cut grass is mostly mechanically thrown into the catcher by the little blades on the base plate side rather than being sucked along by the large volumes of air being blasted through the catcher.
The air outlet of the catcher points down again directing whatever sound it is carrying towards the ground

 

[bertsmobile1]

I should have figured out that the height adjuster wasn't a drive mechanism -- there is no control to engage and disengage the drive. :confused2:

Wow... $1000 for that starter part? Some collectors are so hard core. I love my old mowers but that's insane.

Oh and I did not notice it was the de-luxe base plate.
there is a 1/2 round slot running from the engine to the edge of the base plate. Into that slot went the optional edge trimmer which had a cone on the engine end driven by contact with the base plate & a blade on the other.

Several enterprising inventors made all sorts of gadgets that either simply replaced the edger blade or were powered from it by swapping the blade with a pully.

 

[Two-Stroke]

Re: Victa Mowers (It's Summer Down Under!) The Quiet Series

To reduce exhaust noise you only need to do two things,
Slow it down
Cool it

Disperseing it by running the exhaust under the base plate does not reduce the total amount of noise but because it is coming from every where at any one place there will be less noise passing.
We made resonators to fit the old VC 125 in my teens, doubled the power but hell it was noisy.
The idea of the under deck exhaust was not to benefit the user it was to benifit the neighbours.

Vortex were very quiet, with a good muffler a little less than an electric mower so obviously every passer by will go and stick their hands underneath to see if it is running won't they ?
Don't you do it every time you pass a more you can not hear ?
Now there is nothing short of a bullet between the ears that will stop buracrats from protecting the population from their own fantaseys regardless of how absurd they are.
And without trying to be political could you imaging the effect of a "quiet mower" available to the suburban home owner would have on all the US mower makers and engine makers ?
The "there must be silence in the suburbs" lobbyist would be hell bent on passing reduced noise laws that no US maker could meet.

For a long time electric mowers were required to have a little bubble on the top with a red & white spinner inside so you would know they were running and that is even after dead mans switches became mandatory .

The red vortex has a very short blade. The blade plate has little curved fan blades pressed into it pointing up and slots pointing to the ground.
So what happens is the air is drawn past the blades and then travels over the top of the blade plate then is directed back down onto the grass, passes along the grass the is sucked back up past the blades again so most of it just swirls around under the base plate .
Sound has to be carried by a medium, it will not pass through a vacuum and at ground level it is transmitted by the air.
If this air is effectively trapped below the mower, you never get to hear the sound it is carrying and it gets converted into heat or is adsorbed by the blades of grass bending to & fro.
The cut grass is mostly mechanically thrown into the catcher by the little blades on the base plate side rather than being sucked along by the large volumes of air being blasted through the catcher.
The air outlet of the catcher points down again directing whatever sound it is carrying towards the ground

Some of the new electric mowers are very quiet so I'll check to see if there's a visual indicator that the engine's running. And it certainly makes sense to have a "dead man's switch" on any electric mower.

This discussion got me thinking about one of the things that I love about most of the two-cycle Lawn-Boys. The noise comming from the exhaust is very well muffled so what you hear is a delightful (to me anyway :laughing: ) mixture of sounds. Not loud at all, and without any of the metal-on-metal noise that you hear from an air-cooled four-stroke.

 

[Two-Stroke]

Oh and I did not notice it was the de-luxe base plate.
there is a 1/2 round slot running from the engine to the edge of the base plate. Into that slot went the optional edge trimmer which had a cone on the engine end driven by contact with the base plate & a blade on the other.

Several enterprising inventors made all sorts of gadgets that either simply replaced the edger blade or were powered from it by swapping the blade with a pully.

Wow... a power-take-off (PTO) on a push mower. I'm tempted to say that Victa is the only company to do that.

 

[bertsmobile1]

This is the standard 4 blade mulch / catch blade plate which was developed from the Vortex research.
When the grass is cut and flung up by the flute on the blade it gets carried to the top against the base plate by virtue of its extra weight and thus momentum.
The flaps in the base plate redirect most of the air back down to the lawn then back up past the blades again.
Meanwhile the grass gets carried by the remaining air into the catcher.
The closer to the ground the mower is the stronger this action is.


By the time the mower is set to about 3" the up draft is not strong enough to keep the clippings against the underside of the mower deck so they drop , get whacked by the flaps, recut and forced down into the grass.
Some say they sharpen the edge of the flaps and that recuts even finner but I have no idea about that .




This is a Vortex Mk II blade plate, note there are no flaps in it and it is a slightly modified oval 2 blade plate with a rubber skirt
The the next photo is the top side of the skirt showing the little fan blades that on the original were part of the full round pressing similat to the one in the top image.
The next is a Mk I Vortex blade sitting loose on the Mk II Vortex blade plate just to give you an idea of how much bigger the MK I blade plate was as they both swung inside the same deck and had the same cut.

Below is a naughty one I could not resist popping in.
It came off a Mk II vortex that was damaged beyond repair because the idiot owner did not change his blades.
He brought it in for a new starter rope & when I asked about the blades I was told not to bother it was cutting fine.
After a brief inspection I told him I would not repair his mower as it was in a dangerious state. If he liked I would supply a new cord & show him how to replace it but my insurance would not allow me to send back a mower in that state.
After some abuse he finally saw good & I sold him a good 4 blade Victa and traded in the Vortex. Only the engine block, blade plate, snorkel & catcher were salvageable so I lost money on that one.