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When Britain had great engineers

Thank you take me back when i start riding my Greeves 1966 scramber 250 with 11e villiers engine great bike

Knowledge is no longer passed on ... only the greed for money 💰💰💰

My schoolmate/friend Patrick worked there 1966-1971. He got the dream job (aged 21) of testing the Norton Commando for 6 months, prior to it,s launch .He tells me he could ride it wherever he liked as long as he put the miles in!! Tough job but somebody had to do it!!😄😄Better viewed with sound off, sorry!

10.00: 79cc Atco-Villiers mower engine (with cast-iron piston giving complete absence of mechanical noise) on the dynamometer. I have an Atco mower with an engine like this, made in 1947.

That was a great insight, I never realised they did everything.

I was born and bought up a few miles from the Villiers factory and as a 14year old teenager I would go to the factory "back door" to beg carburettor parts to keep my old Villiers 2T engine running!!. In summer 1970 as a sixteen year old I walked into the front door offices of Villiers and asked about an apprenticeship. Surprisingly I was given an informal interview at the end of which the interviewer said he would like to take me on but he doubted the factory would still be open when my apprenticeship finished!! I went back to school in September to start "A" levels and told my careers tutor I wanted a career in Engineering he replied a career in Engineering was "A waste of a grammar school education" Remember this is in the "Black Country" area which prided itself on its Engineering heritage. I promptly ran away to sea as a Marine Engineering Cadet with British Petroleum (BP) A short while later I did work at the "Villiers" for a few weeks when I was sent on work experience by BP who as part of my training seconded me to the Turner Manufacturing Company who machined gears for commercial vehicle gearboxes at the old Villiers factory (Looking at your photographs i may have been based in the old cylinder machine shop but not 100% certain). However I am pretty certain they were assembling what must have been some of the last Norton Commandoes in an adjacent area of the old Villiers works. So there you you have it all the problems of UK manufacturing in one local teenagers very early experience. Spare parts disappearing through the back door,, demotivated staff at the front door and local schools not valuing Engineering as a career . Of course if the Villiers had taken me on as an apprentice it would have all been very different.!!!!!

When Brittan made stuff, before the Deep State Globalist Swamp Marxists puppet Govs shut these factories down.... but stay strong the UK will come back, as the Globalist Swamp is self destroying itself..

You can see how they failed, right away! The M.D. is an old man. Another British Disease! They all had old men set in their ways, running British industry! Lack of vision did for lots of British companies.

This why Britain was called , Great Britain . The knowledge and expertise was unreal .

Need a 10 hour edit of this little engine happily popping along.

When I was a child in the 60’s most small engine bikes used Villiers engines. Why did successive governments allow our engineering prowess to slip away?

beautiful engine

Cuando haces un video de un Austral Kerosene más grande?

What a criminal act to have destroyed all this. Our heritage gone forever. The skills, the pride in producing something. Having done something useful. A sell out, and for what? The ‘welfare state’ daytime tv and universal credit.🥺😠

ASTONISHING !! Although i was born in the industrial West Midlands, and my Dad and family member's worked in Engineering, and knew where Villiers were, I had no idea they had such a vast range of processes and departments. What happened to all this equippment ?

my dad grew up in this era and looking at all th b+w photos everything was made in Britain,built to last .The person talking about Bultaco engines they would have fallen to bits.Also loss of empire and barring from EEC markets meant lack of investment in the 60s so the working capital decreased. Where are we now,we ust have to invest in a p roper and efficient way.

That's running beautifully. Nice one. I love running my old dad's 4HP (videos of it up). One day I need to do something about the 2HP.

I was an apprentice engineer at Hawker Siddelely Dynamics in the late 60's & my 1st bike was Villiers 197cc. The machines Villiers have in their workshops are in great condition, but the workshops are cramped, poorly lit and probably not well ventilated. It was major blunder for the the UK to lose it's technological lead in the aerospace industry, vehicle manufacture and others. Germany kept what they had and have done very well

this channel is owned by someone i know

Interesting looking at this series of photographs on the Villiers manufacturing company, I was looking thru TH-cam to find out a bit about my Villiers engine on an old lawnmower that I have and came across this, the old machine I have apparently dates back to 1948 and it’s in amazing original condition, I found it in an old shed here in Victoria, Australia and it has been untouched in it for the last 50 years, due to its brass fuel tank and other bits there is zero corrosion and probably due to our more than dry most of the time climate, the engine, a Villiers Midget, is in remarkable condition as after a couple of hours spent getting it ready and fuelled the damn thing started on the second kick of the starter! And runs like a dream, I can just about count the revs as they can be reduced to a slow speed unlike any other 2 stroke engine I’ve come across, almost like it’s a bloody diesel! They sure made some quality back then!

Back in the day we could make anything in this country with brilliant engineering where did it all go wrong we make virtually nothing now. What a great look back in time the cost of all that machinery & equipment must have been huge.

Today's Occ. Health and Safety people would have a pink fit watching the starting procedure! Great to see this very old engine brought back to life again.

Such a shame all of this great industry has been lost this country is slowly going down the pan its very sad

Great video, pretty much everyone likes Villiers engines and you are lucky if you own one. I don't ride motorcycles so I'm talking about small stationary engines. They were widely used to power many appliances from lawnmowers to generators, cement mixers, water pumps etc... at building sites, farms pretty much everywhere. Now the one of the main disadvantages of small Villiers stationary engines; the crankshaft don't have a woodruff key for the flywheel so ignition timing is difficult(not as easy as it's counterparts). Villiers engines were built from very good quality parts; this made the spare parts very expensive and their scrap value is very high, for example the flywheel is solid brass, engine block is quality cast iron, the sump and carburettor and magneto back plate are quality aluminium. So these quality parts always had a very high scrap value compared to other engines like Briggs and Stratton etc.. and Villiers was not easy to fix if anything went wrong and parts were costly. The WX11 water cooled 2 stroke stationary engine and Villiers Mar-Vil and the Villiers Mk15 ohv engines are among the most collectable ones and fetching astronomical figures if they are complete. Best Regards

Maggie Conu I worked in my parents business from the early 60's selling villiers powered motorbikes, industrial engines and all the parts for the engines. I used to go to the factory regularly to collect parts, change parts, sort problems and knew a lot of the staff very well. In the early days there were people racing round in little anzani trailers powered by a villers engine, there was a single wheel at the front and a steering bar. The factory was so vibrant. Much of the historical items disappeared during the lockdown when there was a dispute between the staff, management and the government were involved. I have recordings of interviews with the Farrers and Margaret Child who was the mainstay of Meetens, the biggest distributor of Villiers spares.

When I first started karting the villiers was the standard 3speed gearbox + flywheel removed after a while new motors introduced so money became the way to win so had to give it up

When I served my apprenticeship in the late 60s, early 70s, most of our machine shops and colleges were equipped with British made machinery. McPherson, Colchester, Nuttal, Churchill, Avery to name a few. Although Australia had many fine tradesmen and engineers, the British engineers were regarded as the finest in the world, second to none. As a people, we bought your cars, tractors, and all types of machinery. If it had "Made in GB", it could be relied upon. What has happened to your great industry? From an outsider, it seems your industry has been moved off-shore, and all your famous brand names sold off. For a country that started the industrial revolution and bought the whole world into a new age, it is really sad to see it lose this edge.

Some impressive machinery for that era, shame about the absence of any forward thinking. Back in the 1970s I worked for a well known rivet and eyelet manufacturer in Birmingham. Many of their 1970 production line tools could also be seen in the Birmingham science museum as examples of Victorian engineering!but

That was a blast from the past, brought back memories of when I started my 5 year fitter and turner apprenticeship in 1956. We had a lot of overhead shafts with belts running down to the machines, the rats used to run along the rotating shafts - and eat the grease I think.

I had a Villiers 175 long stroke engine.it sounded fantastic.

Wow! How does that work?

It is probably a bit simplistic to blame Margaret Thatcher alone. The rot set in earlier than her time .Several forces were at play: Management lethargy with Britain effectively 'Resting on her laurels' for most of the 1950s.This was the time when Germany and Japan were re- tooling courtesy of US money( Americans attempting to head off Communism).To be fair Britain still had a notion of Empire and was struggling to keep that show on the road so to speak.The former Axis powers had no such pressures nor much Defence spending to drain them. The British Class system was ( is still ??) a major cause of unrest.This issue of differential treatment of the various layers of staff is a recurring theme in the comments.It was one of the reasons that the Unions became so Militant and ultimately contributed to their own Demise- especially in the Motor industry. In Germany for the last 150 years Engineering and it's people have been highly admired and have real status and the respect of the broad community.This is reflected in its educational system.Is this the case in Britain even now? Perhaps ultimately it has to be said that in Manufacturing to succeed you have to make things that people want and you have to Market them well.In the end Villiers failed to do this.Still a pity all the same.

In the 1980,s I started running lorry,s out of forges and machine shops around the Black country. I worked alongside Perkson Forgings in the Lye and the area was full of works of all kinds. Steel stockholders. Picklers. Galvanizers. You name it. Now all has gone, and I mean all. All those skilled people. The pubs. Cafes. Gone. I packed up the haulage in the late 90,s due to the collapse of industry. And now, in my latter years, have started a machine shop with my son. You never know. What goes around.....

What an incredible set-up with so many machines I've never heard about SBC. The trouble with this film was that it really needed some explaining plus a few demo's perhaps (which didn't happen) and followed by a quick tour of all the workshops actually in full flow just to hear the noise which would have broken up the monotony of that music which started to get on my nerves because it was too repetitive. Soft jazz or acoustic guitar & bass might have worked along with some cheap to produce animated inserts would have been grand. Lastly, an interview with the oldest and longest lasting member of the Villiers works team giving us a small demo about what each room did please.

I ever ever fancied a Villiers powered bike. Noisy smelly underpowered things. 👿

Looks like it uses a lot of gas to make a little power,,stirling engine the same,,

Comprehensive facilities for the 1940s (I would imagine). Unfortunately Villiers just carried on making 1940s engines until the company finally turned up its toes. When I swapped my 32A engined bike for a Bultaco, even a naive 16 year-old like me could see that the engines were like chalk and cheese. This didn't just destroy Villiers, but also took down James, Francis-Barnett, Greeves and all the others that relied on their engines.

In around 1962 i was given an old motorbike and with bits and pieces built a grass track bike, the engine was a Villiers 197, not sure now if it was a 9E, incredible engine and never had a problem with it.

I worked there for a short time in late 50s early 60s as a trainee tool setter using multi drillers and tappers on crank cases in B shop loved standing watching the engine test beds,good days

unbelievable, what happened to British manufacturing, we led the world, once en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Doxford_%26_Sons

As a young lad in the late 70's i would catch the bus to the factory and spend my pocket money on 2T engine parts, my first rebuild project. The storeman in his brown warehouse coat used to let me behind the counter to pick out the parts from amongst the rows of parts and I can still remember the smell of the preserving oil and brown paper wrapping. What happened, what went wrong?

What the hell happened to Britain and villiers the once mighty villiers ? It’s a crying shame, i bet all the machinery is over seas still churning out parts!

A fascinating piece of history of a company in Wolverhampton. I didn't realise how large a foot print the company covered considering I walked, cycled and drove past for about 33 years. Of course Google maps were not invented in 1961 so from Marston Road and Upper Villiers Street you only saw a very minute part of the site. I served my apprenticeship at a company approximately a 1/4 mile from the main entrance at the end of Cyprus Street , which was off Upper Villiers Street. Unfortunately the memory is not as good as it was , perhaps 15 years ago. In more recent times with advent of the internet the we find out more about of our social, cultural and industrial heritage. I was not looking for anything about Wolverhampton's history it was one of those things that popped up as history is one those things I watch on TH-cam along with a lot of specialist videos that interest me. Thanks for posting, take care and stay safe.

All the result of Maggie’s wonderful world dogma, manufacturing was a dirty word the money markets were the thing ,there was a time when governments were actively involved in job creation and the welfare of its workers, how far we have fallen not a lot of difference between the U.K. and the once laughed at banana republic’s where those in power schemed to steal and enrich themselves whilst spinning a web of lies that a sizeable section of a gullible electorate will swallow hook line and sinker, the old adage still holds true put a Union flag on a donkey and it will get elected, just look at the calibre of most Tory MPs,

In the picture showing the various engines , I've owned or used at least half of them , now I've got to remember their names 😱

Such a shame that there has been so much manufacturing lost in UK. When I was 17 my first bike restoration included the rebuild of a Villiers 8E engine and 3 speed gearbox.

The kids of today will never understand how exciting it was to become part of such an enterprise. Canteens, surgeries and recreation rooms, were branded as paternalism, and taken away.

Villiers,like farmers orange twine,kept this world from falling apart at one time!!!

Those were the days....they MADE engines, not just buy and assemble Parts....