You were asking
Unusual Villiers Junior barrel
My early Excelsior Autobyk has a Villiers engine dissimilar to other Junior units. As you will note from my photographs, the sparking plug is in a different location to others, including that used for the 1937 illustration at the time of the model’s release. Any enlightenment will be appreciated.
Walter McClellan, via email, Australia.
While the engine barrel design variance is easily explained, why such is fitted to your 1937 Excelsior is a mystery.
During the late 1920s and early 1930s, a number of British makers considered simple, pedal start small capacity single speed two-stroke machines. With a few exceptions (such as the Cyc-Auto) most failed or gave up, leaving us wondering why they didn’t follow the well proven French concept of approximately 100cc pedal start single speed Vèlomoteurs made by Peugeot, Motobecane, Rousesey, Prester, MR (Mandille et Roux) et al.
With a simple autocycle type machine in mind, in 1934 Villiers unveiled the George Jones-designed 98cc single cylinder two-stroke single speed autocycle engine, named the Junior. Initially in sales terms it was a damp squib. One can imagine makers who used Villiers motorcycle engines (like James, Francis-Barnett, Excelsior etc) poking it with
