Victa Mowers (It's Summer Down Under!)

[Two-Stroke]

Here's a video of a 1956 model Victa 18 Rotomo:

The sound of those early two-strokes... :cloud9:

 

[Lawnboy18]

That is a very unique and nice mower! Love the sound. You can't get a mower more simple than that!

 

[bertsmobile1]

That is a very unique and nice mower! Love the sound. You can't get a mower more simple than that!

If the colour is correct then it is more unique than you could imagine.
AFAIK all Victas were green till the mid 60's with the exception of badge engineered storebrand mowers
There is a nice collection of early Victas on this video, none were started but all look correct.
Note both the Auo & Special ( last two in line up ) have alloy bases.
They made both alloy & steel bases concurrently and still do
Nothing I have is any where as old as those, I go back to around 1970.
There might be some slightly older ones in the grave yard ( old mowers for spares ) but it is a big pile to sort through.

 

[bertsmobile1]

ok .
had a wander around, camera in hand.
Will do these in batches to keep posts to a reasonable size.
Starting with the commercials.
These are 2 Victa Slashers ( 3 including the one in the shop with broken spring )
The orange ones are 1969 and 1971, the red one is 1988.
All are in regular use, I have sold 4 of them in the last 18 months as in small yards ( 0.5 acres or less ) they are quicker than a ride on / push mow / trimmer combo.
Usually I "lend " one out to customers whose mowers will be a week or more in the shop.
Every one is defiant that they will not even think of using it, about 1/3 ask if they can buy one.


The Orange on is a Super 24 because it is a 24" cut, The red one is a 600 because the metric nazis objected to using inch names in a metric country.
They have 2 flat or fluted swing back blades on a large diameter round blade plate, the same blades ( 4 ) on a bigger plate go on the 30" & 32" ride ons.
This orange one has an optional double cartridge filter at the base of the snorkel while the red runs a std single filter at the top but has the large diameter snorkel tube ( makes absolutely no difference )
In around 300 hours I have never needed to replace an air filter. They are both heavy mowers and were standard equipment for local councils to mow roadsides, playing fields and the like till the late 80's



The Orange one has a 160cc VC engine and the red is a Power Torque Mk I
The VC engines with round pull starts are hard to come by as 2 local companies made mini bikes using this engine and you could also buy the frame kit and provide ( borrow) your own motor.
When I was in high school ( 12 yo to 18 yo ) we used to make mini bike frames in metal shop to fit Victa mower engines, they were very popular and probably explain a lot of "vanishing" mowers.
Both have alloy bases the orange ones run at 3500 rpm the red at 3300 rpm, have not noticed any difference in use.
I can cut down saplings to about 2" did with thse units and regularly do along the fence run that is too dangerous to run the ride on with out front slasher due to wombat holes, wash aways & wallaby tracks.




Both are belt drive, the orange ones pull the engine back while the red pushes the motor back as the alloy plates tend to fracture around the tensioning nut.
Two big bearings on the blade plate



This one is in the shop for a spring replacement and bearing repack

 

[bertsmobile1]

I found some pictures of a beautifully restored Victa "Toe Cutter".


A few things are worth noting:

It has shaft-driven 4WD -- but plain old wrap-the-rope starting. :confused3:

The engine exhaust is directed under the deck -- Did Victa do this first or Lawn-Boy... or someone else?

Instead of a fixed blade it has a disk fitted with spinning blades. Jacobsen had this design in the 1960s -- others too, I think. This, combined with completely open deck sides, means that the mower would be almost impossible to clog.

Trial Lawyers Wet Dream: In addition to chopping off toes, the lack of sides on the deck would mean that debris like small rocks would fly out in all directions. :shocked:

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

 

[bertsmobile1]

This is why I rabbit on about how "User oriented" Victa was.
Since 1952 Victa have only used 22 different blades and most of them were in the early days till they got it right.
There are 11 blades covering 1974 till now and 2 of them are different thickness of the same blade.
Because Model names mean nothing to workshops ( purely marketing ) and because they made better than 50 different shop branded mowers, Victa code the actual blades.
In the above photo note that the short end of each type of blade has different corner cuts so as long as the customer has that reminant of the blade I can supply the correct blades for their mower.
And you would not believe how many come in with only just that much blade left.
Swing back blades are supposed to be balanced to within 6 gram, but as long as the mower cuts the grass a lot of people are happy to use a mower that is literally leaping from side to side.
Then they get cranky because the deck splits or handle breaks

 

[bertsmobile1]

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



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.



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



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]

 

[bertsmobile1]

I found some pictures of a beautifully restored Victa "Toe Cutter".

View attachment 24540

View attachment 24541

View attachment 24543

View attachment 24544

View attachment 24542

A few things are worth noting:

It has shaft-driven 4WD -- but plain old wrap-the-rope starting. :confused3:

The engine exhaust is directed under the deck -- Did Victa do this first or Lawn-Boy... or someone else?

Instead of a fixed blade it has a disk fitted with spinning blades. Jacobsen had this design in the 1960s -- others too, I think. This, combined with completely open deck sides, means that the mower would be almost impossible to clog.

Trial Lawyers Wet Dream: In addition to chopping off toes, the lack of sides on the deck would mean that debris like small rocks would fly out in all directions. :shocked:

I forgot to reply to the last 2 items.
The first Billy cart / peach tin Victa has fixed blades ( 1952) on a blade bar. From 1954 onwards all Victas were fitted with swing back blades fitted to a deeply dished disk and this included the ride ons that were imported from the USA and the ones they tried to make locally.

As for flying rocks you are correct.
They did make an optional skirt for the sides and rubber flaps for front or back or both but seldom were they fitted. Remember in 1960 a rotary mower cost around 2 months wages, before you started adding extras. Most were bought on hire contract so by the time they were finally paid off over the typical 4 years the cost was closer to 6 months wages. My own father rode a push bike 10 miles to & from work so he could afford to pay for his first petrol mower. Then it was a fridge followed by a TV so if there was no overtime we went hungry.
As for lawers, we did not get free university education till the Whitlam government (1974) so the few lawers available were totally run off their feet doing divorces

 

[Lawnboy18]

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".

 

[Two-Stroke]

ok .
had a wander around, camera in hand.
Will do these in batches to keep posts to a reasonable size.
Starting with the commercials.
These are 2 Victa Slashers ( 3 including the one in the shop with broken spring )
The orange ones are 1969 and 1971, the red one is 1988.
All are in regular use, I have sold 4 of them in the last 18 months as in small yards ( 0.5 acres or less ) they are quicker than a ride on / push mow / trimmer combo.
Usually I "lend " one out to customers whose mowers will be a week or more in the shop.
Every one is defiant that they will not even think of using it, about 1/3 ask if they can buy one.
View attachment 24547

The Orange on is a Super 24 because it is a 24" cut, The red one is a 600 because the metric nazis objected to using inch names in a metric country.
They have 2 flat or fluted swing back blades on a large diameter round blade plate, the same blades ( 4 ) on a bigger plate go on the 30" & 32" ride ons.
This orange one has an optional double cartridge filter at the base of the snorkel while the red runs a std single filter at the top but has the large diameter snorkel tube ( makes absolutely no difference )
In around 300 hours I have never needed to replace an air filter. They are both heavy mowers and were standard equipment for local councils to mow roadsides, playing fields and the like till the late 80's

View attachment 24551

The Orange one has a 160cc VC engine and the red is a Power Torque Mk I
The VC engines with round pull starts are hard to come by as 2 local companies made mini bikes using this engine and you could also buy the frame kit and provide ( borrow) your own motor.
When I was in high school ( 12 yo to 18 yo ) we used to make mini bike frames in metal shop to fit Victa mower engines, they were very popular and probably explain a lot of "vanishing" mowers.
Both have alloy bases the orange ones run at 3500 rpm the red at 3300 rpm, have not noticed any difference in use.
I can cut down saplings to about 2" did with thse units and regularly do along the fence run that is too dangerous to run the ride on with out front slasher due to wombat holes, wash aways & wallaby tracks.


View attachment 24548

Both are belt drive, the orange ones pull the engine back while the red pushes the motor back as the alloy plates tend to fracture around the tensioning nut.
Two big bearings on the blade plate


View attachment 24550
This one is in the shop for a spring replacement and bearing repack

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.