On Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:27:22 GMT, Baz wrote:

It was bought new with a Kohler petrol engine, as it says on the
paperwork, and was later fitted with the Hatz diesel in the 70's so it
could use cheaper red diesel.

Ahh.... thanks for the clarification.

The guy still has the Kohler engine according to his son and that is
mine too, just have to find it and cart it home. What do you do with
this?

Keep it as a spare? Or find/build something to mount it on, clean it up
to "showroom" condition and run it at stationary engine shows.

I am tempted to restore this beautiful machine, but for now it is a
tool and it runs nicely, a bit rattly.

"restore" in my book is maintain properly, ie clean it after use. Keep
the engine fettled, oil changes etc, repair carefully if required. Store
in decent conditions.

Well I have found tyres which I thought would be a bugger but not so.
Weather allowing it is going to be put to the test Sat. morning.

Go for it they look like fun but I have sneaky feeling they are not that
easy to control.

I will find somewhere to buy red deisel! VAT free.

You still pay VAT but the duty is only 11.14p/l rather than the 57.95p/l
on road diesel (46.81p/l difference). Last lot I bought in Dec '11 (25l)
was 90p/l. The local Spar currently advertises red at 98p/l.

I suspect the Hatz engine is none to fussy about fuel, it might run on
Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO), have a dig about on the web and see what
others have found. Mind you new cooking oil prices in 20l bulk quantities
are a similar price to red diesel. But if you have a cheap/free source
(local chippy, filter it first)... Starting from cold or in cold weather
with SVO might be tricky but that can eased by adding diesel, experiment.
Always assuming the engine will tun on SVO.

BTW The duty on red will rise on 1st Jan 2013 to 11.72p/l (+0.58p) and on
diesel/petrol to 60.97p/l (+3.02p).

--
Cheers
Dave.